Inserting Date column

[RandyStan]

I want to insert a date column:

I wrote

data want; set have;

format date mmddyy10. ;

put date '03/21/2017' ;

run;

what mistake am i making?

[Reeza]

You have two mistakes:

1. PUT outputs the information to the log, it does not create a variable. To create a variable assign it using the = operator.

2. To assign a date value, you need to use a date literal which is of the DATE9 format, quoted, and a d follows to denote a date literal.

data want; 
set have;
format date mmddyy10. ;
date =  '21Mar2017'd';
run;

[Kurt_Bremser]

Now, if you have string data in the format MM/DD/YYYY, then you can use the input() function to make a SAS date value out of it:

data want;
set have;
format date mmddyy10. ;
date = input('03/21/2017',mmddyy10.);
run;