SAS Git function Provides a wrong date

[Balli]

Hi,

I am using GIT_COMMIT_GET function to get the commit date from Github history log. Unfortunately it is giving me a wrong date (10 years old) and when I look at the documentation, this function returns a time starting from 1970:

Time – the number of seconds since January 1st, 1970

As the SAS dates start from 01 Jan 1960, this is giving me a wrong date. Any idea how this can be fixed ?

%let GITBranch=Your_Local_Repository;

data work.x;
format time1 datetime.;
LENGTH COMMIT_ID AUTHOR_NAME AUTHOR_EMAIL MESSAGE PARENT_IDS TIME $ 1024;

N = GIT_COMMIT_LOG("&GITBranch.");

DO I=1 TO N;
RC = GIT_COMMIT_GET(I,"&GITBranch.", "id", COMMIT_ID);
RC = GIT_COMMIT_GET(I,"&GITBranch.", "author", AUTHOR_NAME);
RC = GIT_COMMIT_GET(I,"&GITBranch.", "email", AUTHOR_EMAIL);
RC = GIT_COMMIT_GET(I,"&GITBranch.", "message", MESSAGE);
RC = GIT_COMMIT_GET(I,"&GITBranch.", "parent_ids", PARENT_IDS);
RC = GIT_COMMIT_GET(I,"&GITBranch.", "time", TIME);
Time1=TIME;
output;
END;
RC = GIT_COMMIT_FREE("&GITBranch.");
drop N I RC;
run;

[Rick_SAS]

Hmm, this is not a great solution, but you can manually subtract the number of seconds between 01JAN1970 and 01JAN1960 by using the INTCK function:

data A;
adjust = INTCK("seconds", '01JAN1960:00.00.00'dt, '01JAN1970:00.00.00'dt);
put adjust;
run;

The answer is 315,619,200 seconds, so you could adjust the TIME variable in your program by that amount.

[Balli]

Thanks Rick 🙂

[ChrisHemedinger · Accepted solution]

This is not unique to Git -- it's true for any time that you exchange date/time values with a system that uses epoch (Unix-style) times.

Here's an example for how to compensate.

options dlcreatedir;
%let repoPath = %sysfunc(getoption(WORK))/sas-dummy-blog;
libname repo "&repoPath.";
libname repo clear;
 
/* Fetch latest code from GitHub */
data _null_;
 rc = gitfn_clone(
   "https://github.com/sascommunities/sas-dummy-blog.git",
   "&repoPath.");
 put rc=;
run;

data commits (keep=time message);
  length time_char $ 100 time 8 message $ 100 n 8;
  n = gitfn_commit_log("&repoPath.");
  format time datetime20.;

  do i=1 to n;
    rc = gitfn_commit_get(i,"&repoPath.",'message',message);
    rc = gitfn_commit_get(i,"&repoPath.",'time',time_char);
    time = trim(time_char);
    time = time + "01jan1970 0:0:0"dt;
    output;
  end;
run;

title "Commits to this sas-dummy-blog repo";
proc print data=commits;
run;
title;

[Balli]

Thanks Chris. It helps 🙂