Date time formatting in sas

[smoore3790]

I have a datetime variable that I am having trouble converting into SAS. my date time variable is in the format dd/mm/yy tttt. An example of this date time is 11/5/2021 1525 for November 5 at 15:25 military time. Does anyone know if there is a formatting way to input this information into sas?

[Tom · Accepted solution]

Read it as a string (or two strings) and then covert them into date and time and/or datetime values.

Examples:

data test;
  input  string1 :$10. string2 :$4. @1 longstr $30. ;
  date1=input(string1,mmddyy10.);
  date2=input(scan(longstr,1,' '),mmddyy10.);
  time1=input(string2,hhmmss4.);
  time2=input(scan(longstr,2,' '),hhmmss4.);
  dt1=dhms(date1,0,0,time1);
  dt2=dhms(input(scan(longstr,1,' '),mmddyy10.),0,0,input(scan(longstr,2,' '),hhmmss4.));
  format date: yymmdd10. time: tod5. dt: datetime19. ;
cards;
11/5/2021 1525 
;

PS Displaying dates in MDY order is going to confuse 50% of your audience.

[smoore3790]

worked great, thanks for the help

[pengaentu]

I am mapping a data set from one program to another. When exported from the first program, the dates are all formatted as mm/dd/yyyy. In order to import the data into the second program, the dates must be formatted as yyyy/mm/dd. I am currently able to set this format in SAS, but when I export the data to excel, the date formats change back to mm/dd/yyyy. Is there a way to keep them as yyyy/mm/dd when exported?

[Tom]

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@pengaentu wrote:

I am mapping a data set from one program to another. When exported from the first program, the dates are all formatted as mm/dd/yyyy. In order to import the data into the second program, the dates must be formatted as yyyy/mm/dd. I am currently able to set this format in SAS, but when I export the data to excel, the date formats change back to mm/dd/yyyy. Is there a way to keep them as yyyy/mm/dd when exported?

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If you want Excel to display dates in a particular style you need to tell Excel that fact.

How did you export the data to an Excel file?

What is the second program? Is it a SAS program?  Why use an Excel file?  Why not just write a CSV file instead?