Extract Date and Date time from string

[Haydo]

I want to create 2 new variables. Period and DTS from the following example:

999999999K 20APR23:11:39:00 AM

Desired results:

Period

20/04/2023

DTS

20Apr2023 11:39:00 am

[PaigeMiller]

It's always hard to generalize when we are presented with only one example of such data. There are many questions: is the date and time always preceded by text and a blank space? Is the date and time always in the form 20APR23:11:39:00 AM ? Is there always a space before the AM or PM?

However, for this example:

data have;
    string='999999999K 20APR23:11:39:00 AM';
run;

data want;
    set have;
    second_word=scan(string,2,' ');
    third_word=scan(string,3,' ');
    date=input(second_word,date7.);
    time=input(cats(substr(second_word,9),third_word),time10.);
    format date date9. time time8.;
    drop second_word third_word;
run;

If that does not work for you on your larger data set, please provide more examples that represents any real-world variability in formatting.

[s_lassen]

I would parse the data with a regular expression:

data have;
  string='999999999K 20APR23:11:39:00 AM';
run;


data want;
prxid=prxparse('/ ([^:]*):(.*)$/');
set have;
if prxmatch(prxid,string);
period=input(prxposn(prxid,1,string),date.);
dts=dhms(period,0,0,input(prxposn(prxid,2,string),time.));
drop prxid;
format period ddmmyy10. dts datetime23.;
run;

The PRX expression looks for a blank, followed by something that is not a colon (the first capture buffer), followed by a colon (not captured), and then the rest of the string ("$" means end of string) in the second capture buffer. Once you have the parts its a piece of cake - I put the time value in the seconds parameter of DHMS(), as a SAS time value is actually the number of seconds since midnight, instead of using 3 function calls to get the hours, minutes and seconds.

Of course, if your data is in a flat file, and not in SAS data, use INPUT (replace the CARDS with the actual physical infile):

data want;
  input somestring : $20.  period date7. +1 time time11.;
  format period ddmmyy10.;
  dts=dhms(period,0,0,time);
  format dts datetime23.;
cards;
999999999K 20APR23:11:39:00 AM
;run;

[Kurt_Bremser]

Use the SCAN function to dissect the string. Convert the 2nd substring to a datetime value with the DATETIME16. informat, and add 12 hours (12 * 3600 seconds) if the 3rd substring is PM.

[Patrick · Accepted solution]

Same as @Kurt_Bremser but using an informat that converts a source string with AM|PM directly to a SAS datetime value.

data have;
  infile datalines truncover;
  input str $100.;
  datalines;
999999999K 20APR23:11:39:00 AM
;

data want;
  set have;
  length dttm_string $25.;
  dttm_string=substr(compbl(str),length(scan(str,1,' '))+2);

  format dts dateampm22. period ddmmyys10.;
  dts=input(dttm_string,datetime19.);
  period=datepart(dts);
run;

proc print data=want;
run;