This is a code snippet I use to read the modification date from a directory listing.
Note that on a simple ls -l, you'll get the modification time for files less than 6 months old, or the year for older files in the same column. So my code replaces the time with the correct year.
You might need to adapt the column pointers in the input statement, this works with AIX.
The first part reads the listing into a temporary file and records messages from that in the SAS log.
filename oscmd pipe "ls -l &pathname > $HOME/files.lst 2>&1";
data _null_;
infile oscmd;
input;
put _infile_;
run;
data filenames (keep=userid datum f_name);
infile '$HOME/files.lst';
length
userid $ 8
zzeit $ 5
monat $ 3
tag $ 2
f_name $ 100
;
format datum ddmmyyp10.;
input
@17 userid $8.
@46 monat
@50 tag
@53 zzeit $5.
@59 f_name
;
if substr(zzeit,3,1) = ':'
then do;
if monat in ('Jul','Aug','Sep','Oct','Nov','Dec')
then zzeit = put(year(&tagesdat)-1,z4.);
else zzeit = put(year(&tagesdat),z4.);
end;
mo = (index('JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec',monat) + 2) / 3;
datum = input(substr(zzeit,1,4) !! put(mo,z2.) !! tag, yymmdd8.);
run;
If you need a scan through a whole directory tree, use the UNIX find command with the -ls directive and adapt the column pointers to the resulting format.
