Datetimes in the wrong format when importing csv files

[staplegunjelly]

Hello Everyone!

This is for a personal project of mine. I need to aggregate a ton of csv files to get my data prepped.

I have 2 datetime columns in my csv files which look like:

datetime_beginning_utc,datetime_beginning_ept
2/11/2022 5:00:00 AM,2/11/2022 12:00:00 AM

The date part of these values are in the mm/dd/yyyy format. When using proc import, the datetimes are being stored as:

Is there anyway to fix this? or any work arounds?

I'm using SAS 9.4

[Tom · Accepted solution]

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@staplegunjelly wrote:

Hello Everyone!

This is for a personal project of mine. I need to aggregate a ton of csv files to get my data prepped.

I have 2 datetime columns in my csv files which look like:

datetime_beginning_utc,datetime_beginning_ept
2/11/2022 5:00:00 AM,2/11/2022 12:00:00 AM

The date part of these values are in the mm/dd/yyyy format. When using proc import, the datetimes are being stored as:

Is there anyway to fix this? or any work arounds?

I'm using SAS 9.4

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What about that is wrong?

If you expected SAS to GUESS that by 2/11 you meant FEB 11th instead of 2nd of NOV then change the setting of the DATESTYLE system option from DMY to MDY before running PROC IMPORT.

Or better still write your own program to read the CSV file and you can have full control over how the text strings are read.

[staplegunjelly]

I had no idea about the datastyle option. Thanks a lot! That did the job for me.
I also tried writing my own program but it worked differently across different csv files.