Measuring time elapsed?

[bluegin]

Hi,

I would like to use SAS to calculate the time elapsed in minutes between two time series, start_time and end_time and store it in a third column, time_elapsed. The data looks as such and is stored in an excel spreadsheet in the following hour-minute format:

start_time     end_time

02:20             02:45

03:00             03:45

04:02             04:17

...                    ...

Is there anyone with an idea as to how to proceed?

Thank you

[ballardw]

If you read it into SAS correctly you will get time values.

The SAS function INTCK can calculate many different intervals between times, dates or datetimes.

Also in SAS

End_time - Start_time would equal the number of seconds. So ElapsedMinutes = (end_time - start_time)/60;

[Orsini]

Something like this... 

data gotcha;                                    

   format start_time end_time time_elapsed time5.;

   infile datalines4;                            

   input @1 start_time time5. @7 end_time time5.;

   time_elapsed = end_time - start_time;         

   datalines4;                                   

02:20 02:45                                      

03:00 03:45                                      

04:02 04:17                                      

;;;;                                             

run;