Converting Date Char to Numeric

[parmis]

Hello,

I have a date variable in $5. format. I'm using the input function to convert it to monyy7. and I'm getting the following error message:

"Invalid argument to function INPUT at line..."

My current date values: ex:01-18

My code:

data need;

set have;

format new_date monyy7.;

new_date = input (old_date, $5.);

run;

Thanks for you help!

[novinosrin]

what does : ex:01-18  value represent in terms on date/month/year?

[parmis]

Month-year, It's January 2018

[PeterClemmensen]

So what does your character date look like? What date does 01-18 represent? The first of january 2018?

[parmis]

month and Year, It's January 2018

[Kurt_Bremser]

I guess it's the 18th of January in any given year. Or January 1st, 1918.

[novinosrin]

data want;
date='01-18';
length _temp $4;
do _n_=2,1;
 _temp=cats(_temp,scan(date,_n_,'-'));
end;
want=input(_temp,yymmn4.);
format want monyy7.;
drop _:;
run;

[PeterClemmensen · Accepted solution]

data test;
    chardate='01-18';
    date=input(chardate, anydtdte5.);
    format date monyy7.;
run;

[parmis]

"01-18" was just an example to show the format of the date. I do have other dates starting Jan 2018 to July 2019 (it's a monthly data).

when I submit the code you posted all my dates change to Jan 2018.

[PaigeMiller]

---

@parmis wrote:

"01-18" was just an example to show the format of the date. I do have other dates starting Jan 2018 to July 2019 (it's a monthly data).

when I submit the code you posted all my dates change to Jan 2018.

---

Can you be specific and show us the exact code that results in "all my dates change to Jan 2018"? As far as I can tell, the code from @PeterClemmensen works perfectly.

[parmis]

The following code works for all "01-18" dates but other dates like "02-18", "03-18"... becomes null in the new data set.

data need;

set have;

 current_date='01-18';

 new_date=input(current_date, anydtdte5.);

format new_date monyy7.;

run;

[PaigeMiller]

---

@parmis wrote:

The following code works for all "01-18" dates but other dates like "02-18", "03-18"... becomes null in the new data set.

data need;

set have;

 current_date='01-18';

 new_date=input(current_date, anydtdte5.);

format new_date monyy7.;

run;

---

Well, if you have the assignment statement

current_date='01-18';

then you are telling SAS to make current_date to be 01-18 for every record in data set HAVE. So SAS is doing exactly what you told it to do. Is that what you want? Is there a variable named CURRENT_DATE in data set HAVE?

[novinosrin]

That's perhaps because you would have ran the below assignment statement too 

chardate='01-18';

which you should not as your objective is to covert the value that you read from the input dataset, which I suppose you would have using a SET statement.

[Tom]

Warning: You are asking for trouble trying to store years in just two digits.

Your INPUT statement doesn't make any sense.  You are telling INPUT() to use the $ informat which means it generates a character value.

To generate a DATE value use an INFORMAT that generates a date value.  It might be easiest given your MM-YY strings to just prefix it with '01-' so it looks like DD-MM-YY then you can use the DDMMYY informat to read that string into a DATE value.

new_date = input ('01-'||old_date, ddmmyy10.);