sas date always displayed as jan 1, 1960

[thesasuser]

The following code for outputing the date in uts format gives the data of Jan 1, 1960 instead of current date.

If keep the format as say date9. I get the correct value.

DATA createdates;
  current1= date();
  format current1  b8601dt.;
RUN;

PROC PRINT data=createdates;
  title 'The createdates data set';
  var current1  ;
RUN;:

The output is

The createdates data set 13:25 Wednesday, June 7, 2017 1

Obs current1

1 19600101T054937

Can anybody help?

[collinelliot]

Looks like you're applying a datetime format to a date value.

[kiranv_ · Accepted solution]

change it to

DATA createdates;
  current1= datetime();
  format current1  b8601dt.;
RUN;

[thesasuser]

Thanks
it worked

 The createdates data set                     13:58 Wednesday, June 7, 2017   1

                                                       Obs       current1

                                                        1     20170607T135842

I there a way can remove the T and have the values like "20170607135842".

The idea is to have it in YYYYMMDDHHmmSS?

[kiranv_]

you may to have to use proc format  with picture statement as shown below

PROC FORMAT;
  picture dt other='%0Y-%0m-%0d%0H%0M%0S' (datatype=datetime);
RUN;
DATA createdates;
  current1= put(datetime(),dt.);
 
RUN;

.

[thesasuser]

Thanks Kiran.

I appreciate your time and efforts in replying to me and reminding that datetime is the proper format to use.

My objective was to get date in the format YYYYMMDDHHmmSS.

So the last solution is not what I want.

I had to remove T from the output. So I used this. compress(put(datetime(),b8601dt.),'T');

For comparison I ran your and my solution

PROC FORMAT;
picture dt other='%0Y-%0m-%0d%0H%0M%0S' (datatype=datetime);
RUN;
DATA createdates;
current1= put(datetime(), dt.);
todays_date=compress(put(datetime(),b8601dt.),'T');
RUN;

and got the result as follows

current1 =    2017-06-07215453

todays_date= 20170607215454

There could be many other ways to do ,

I am accepting your earlier post as a solution. It put the ray of light  on the solution

Thanks once again.