Converting custom informat datetime to DATETIMEn. format

[Ani_Abby]

I've been searching function or a way to convert datetime DDD MON DD HH:MM:SS YYYY (e.g Tue Oct 31 01:30:31 2017) I received from datalist to DATETIME19. At the moment I use SQL CASE format, FIND function and temporary field to get day, month, year, hour, minute and second. 

I'm using SAS 9.2

[ChrisNZ · Accepted solution]

Your date is weird enough that you must parse the string.

Here is one way:

data _null_;
  A='Tue Oct 31 01:30:31 2017';
  B=input(scan(A,3)||scan(A,2)||scan(A,5,' ')||':'||scan(A,4,' '),datetime.);
run;

[Ani_Abby]

Thank you 🙂

[Norman21]

If the variable is a datetime number (the number of seconds from midnight 1 January 1960), then you can apply any of a range of datetime formats to display the data as you wish.

If the variable is not a datetime number, then you have to extract the components and re-assemble them. If you do this correctly, you can convert the result into a SAS datetime number, then apply a format as described above.

Some advice on coding can be found here:

https://blogs.sas.com/content/sasdummy/2011/11/15/do-you-mind-if-we-dance-with-your-dates/