Formatting a macro variable

[SASdevAnneMarie]

Hello Experts,

I would like to display the today date as DD_MM_YY. I apply this code :

%let Date_today=%sysfunc(tranwrd(%sysfunc(today(),ddmmyy10.),"/","_"));

But I have as result DD/MM/YY.

Thank you for your help !

[PaigeMiller · Accepted solution]

You want the TRANSLATE function, not TRANWRD.

%let Date_today=%sysfunc(translate(%sysfunc(today(),ddmmyy10.),"_","/"));
%put &=date_today;

[SASdevAnneMarie]

Thank you!

[Tom]

Because the three byte string you asked TRANWRD to change did not appear, so it made no changes.

1    %put %sysfunc(tranwrd(%sysfunc(today(),ddmmyy10.),"/","_"));
16/11/2025

You could remove the quote characters from the strings.

2    %put %sysfunc(tranwrd(%sysfunc(today(),ddmmyy10.),/,_));
16_11_2025

You could switch to using TRANSLATE, which replaces individual bytes. Remember that the order of the TO and FROM arguments is reversed.

3    %put %sysfunc(translate(%sysfunc(today(),ddmmyy10.),_,/));
16_11_2025

Note if you include multiple bytes in the FROM and TO arguments then the bytes are paired up by their position in the TO and FROM arguments.  As long as you use the same quotes in both TO and FROM (or the source strings does not have any quotes to translate) then you can get away with adding quotes around the characters you want translated.

4    %put %sysfunc(translate(%sysfunc(today(),ddmmyy10.),"_","/"));
16_11_2025

 Which could be useful when the values contain commas or other special characters since then you can avoid having to use macro quoting.

5    %put %sysfunc(translate(%sysfunc(today(),ddmmyy10.),",","/"));
16,11,2025

And finally if you plan to use this underscore delimited string in file names the you should use YMD order instead so that the names will sort properly.

6    %put %sysfunc(translate(%sysfunc(today(),yymmdd10.),_,-));
2025_11_16

And as an added bonus you avoid people confusing October twelfth for the tenth of December. 

[SASdevAnneMarie]

Thank you, Tom !