Date formatting

[myboys2]

I have field as a char 10 (teststop3) 01/31/2017

I need to make this field a numeric 8.  I have tried many ways and can not get this straight one way was

srvstop=input(teststop3,8.)

[ballardw]

Likely you are looking for something like:

srvstop = input(teststop3, mmddyy10.);

and if you want to see the value as a date apply an appropriate format:

format srvstop mmddyy10. ;

or

format srvstop date9. ;

as a couple of examples.

srvstop will have a value similar to 20850. The formats show the value as a human readable date.

[PeterClemmensen]

data _null_;
   chardate = '01/31/2017';
   date = input(chardate, mmddyy10.);
   format date date9.;
   put date;
run;