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gblock
Calcite | Level 5

I have a date (has month day year time) which Proc Contents says is datetime16. I want to convert it to a character string of format mm/dd/yyyy, with slashes and no time. 

I'm using SAS 9.4, 64bit, on a Mac through Parallels.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions
ChrisHemedinger
Community Manager

Create a new 10-byte char variable, and PUT the date part of the value using the MMDDYY10. format.  The DATEPART function will create the date value that you can format.

 

data want;
  set have; /* data with a datetime var, let's call it dt */
  length chardate $ 10;
  chardate = put(datepart(dt), mmddyy10.);
run;

But... why?  Perhaps just to export to something else for a text-based report?  While the value is in SAS, you can format and report/analyze without having to create a new variable.

Learn from the Experts! Check out the huge catalog of free sessions in the Ask the Expert webinar series.

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3 REPLIES 3
ChrisHemedinger
Community Manager

Create a new 10-byte char variable, and PUT the date part of the value using the MMDDYY10. format.  The DATEPART function will create the date value that you can format.

 

data want;
  set have; /* data with a datetime var, let's call it dt */
  length chardate $ 10;
  chardate = put(datepart(dt), mmddyy10.);
run;

But... why?  Perhaps just to export to something else for a text-based report?  While the value is in SAS, you can format and report/analyze without having to create a new variable.

Learn from the Experts! Check out the huge catalog of free sessions in the Ask the Expert webinar series.
ballardw
Super User

If you are ever likely to want to sort on the data, or possibly group by month and year, or year and quarter or similar you might consider adding another date variable with the appropriate default format.

 

dateonly = datepart(datetimevariable);

format dateonly mmddyy10. ;

 

Using the dateonly variable for the x-axis of a graph will have values sort in chronologically. If you use a character then you get a sort order like: 01/01/2015, 01/01/2016, 01/02/2015, 01/02/2016 which is not often the desired appearance.

 

 

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