Year-variable from a date

[Gothardt]

I have this data set:

Obs.     Indate     

1          1/7/2011

2          3/7/2012

3          5/4/2014

4          1/9/2011

5          8/9/2013

6          1/1/2014

How do I create a new variable (year) which looks like this:

Obs.     Year

1          2011

2          2012

3          2014

4          2011

5          2013

6          2014

[FreelanceReinh]

Hi @Gothardt,

If variable INDATE is numeric, you can define

Year=year(indate);

Otherwise, the definition could read

Year=year(input(indate, mmddyy10.));

provided that INDATE is in MM/DD/YYYY format. If it's DD/MM/YYYY format, please replace mmddyy10. by ddmmyy10. in the above code.

[RW9 · Accepted solution]

Just to add, if its a character variable, then you might be better off with:

year=scan(datevar,3,"/");  

If you input it to date and then take a year, you will need to handle the possiblity of missing or invalida dates.  The scan will take the third piece of text delimited by /.

[FreelanceReinh]

Good point from @RW9. The SCAN technique would also be more robust in case of leading blanks
("    1/7/2011").

Edit: By default, this would result in a character variable YEAR, whereas the approach using the YEAR function yields a numeric variable.

[ballardw]

And depending on what you are doing, if the value is currently a SAS date value use the Year format to display as needed.

Example:

data example;

   x='05APR2016'd;

run;

proc print data=have;

   var x;

   format x year4.;

run;