replace a SAS date for one record

[Orchidn]

Hi everyone,

I have a record which has a missing value for a datetime20. field called ReportingDate. 

I would like to replace the missing value with a constant - like this '23Jan2021'd.

If I assign this:

if ReportingDate=. then ReportingDate= '23Jan2021'd

I obtain this value: 01JAN1960:06:11:43 instead of the 23Jan2021 value that I want.

How can I solve this issue?

Thank you so much!

[Reeza · Accepted solution]

You've provided a date, not a DATETIME value.
You can use the DHMS function and pass the date in as the number of days to get a DateTime variable, or you can provide it as a datetime literal.

if ReportingDate=. then ReportingDate= dhms('23Jan2021'd, 0, 0, 0);

if ReportingDate=. then ReportingDate= '23Jan2021:00:00:00'dt;

Here's a great, but longer and in depth, reference for dates and times in SAS
https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/Working-with-Dates-and-Times-in-SAS-Tutorial/...

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@Orchidn wrote:

Hi everyone,

I have a record which has a missing value for a datetime20. field called ReportingDate. 

I would like to replace the missing value with a constant - like this '23Jan2021'd.

If I assign this:

if ReportingDate=. then ReportingDate= '23Jan2021'd

I obtain this value: 01JAN1960:06:11:43 instead of the 23Jan2021 value that I want.

How can I solve this issue?

Thank you so much!

---

[Orchidn]

Hi Reeza,

Thank you so much for your prompt and useful response!
This is great!