Passing char date variables list and impute the date

[Moksha]

Hi All, 

       I have deleted my earlier message content as I feel that it's not very clear and also received a response that it's not clear. Can anyone share sample code for date imputations where the input to a macro is a list of char type date variables?

Thanks

[LinusH]

Your're right, it's a bit hard to follow you... 🙂

But if you could provide with a relevant input data it might becomes more clear. That in a for of a data step with DATALINES.

[Moksha]

Thank you for the reply. Since, I feel that it's not very clear, I will delete this post.

[Patrick · Accepted solution]

I've seen your initial post which was an example of "over-macrotized". 

You need to start with a single static example just using a SAS data step and make this work for all the different date patterns you're dealing with.

Only then try to make your code dynamic.

From how I understand your problem there shouldn't be a need for much macro logic at all.

You could start with a simple data step as below until you get it right for all the possible date strings you're dealing with.

data test;
  infile datalines truncover;
  input date_string $20.;
  format dt date9.;
  
  /* try-catch with multiple informats */
  dt=input(date_string,?? date9.);
  if missing(dt) then dt=input(date_string,?? yymmdd10.);
  if missing(dt) then dt=input(date_string,?? ddmmyy10.);
  /* more formats as required to cover all the possible date strings */
  datalines;
10Jan2023
10-Feb
20231015
15102023
15-10-2023
;

proc print data=test;
run;

[Moksha]

Thank you very much for the example. Yes, I will explore it further.