Hi:
Internally, it appears that your date values are really just DATE values stored as numeric variables. It does not appear that they are actually DATETIME variables. Assuming this to be the case, then you could just use either simple arithmetic to determine duration or you could use the fancier interval functions. Let's start with a simple example. I already have THIS data:
But, even though we can all read those dates, they are stored internally as the number of days since Jan 1, 1960, which is how SAS dates are stored internally. In the data set in storage, the dates look like this:
However, with a SAS-defined format, I can control the appearance of those dates, as shown below:
So assuming that you just want to alter how the numeric date values appear, that can be accomplished with a FORMAT statement. We teach the FORMAT statement in our free Programming 1 e-learning class.
If you want to find the number of days or number of years between the hired date and the promoted date, then because the dates are stored internally as numbers, you can do simple arithmetic. (or, there are fancier functions, but let's keep it simple for now.)
Here's the entire program, it includes the data for the WORK.FAKEDATA file that was used initially. You should be able to run everything.
data fakedata;
length name $10 jobtitle $15;
infile datalines dlm=',';
input name $ hired : date9. promoted : date9. jobtitle $;
return;
datalines;
Alan,15Jan1990,23Feb1995,Accountant
Barbara,15Nov2000,01Jan2003,Biophysicist
Chester,03Mar1999,21Jun2004,Chef
Diana,29Sep2014,19May2016,Deputy
Edward,01Jan2015,29Jul2018,Economist
;
run;
proc print data=fakedata;
title '1) Use formats to control display';
var name hired promoted jobtitle;
format hired mmddyy10. promoted date9.;
run;
proc print data=fakedata;
title '2) Use DIFFERENT formats to control display';
var name hired promoted jobtitle;
format hired monyy5. promoted mmddyy10.;
run;
proc print data=fakedata;
title '3) Use DATE9. format to control display';
var name hired promoted jobtitle;
format hired promoted date9.;
run;
proc print data=fakedata;
title '4) Show internal numbers for values';
var name hired promoted jobtitle;
format hired promoted;
run;
title;
data howlong;
set fakedata;
howlong_in_days = promoted - hired;
howlong_in_years = howlong_in_days / 365.25;
run;
proc print data=howlong;
title 'How Long in Original Job';
var name hired promoted jobtitle
howlong_in_days howlong_in_years;
format hired mmddyy10. promoted monyy5.;
run;
title;Here's a good blog post on interval processing using SAS Functions: https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2017/05/15/intck-intnx-intervals-sas.html .
Hopes this helps explain how to use the FORMAT statement and how to simply calculate duration, IF your date variables are stored as numeric variables that represent the number of days since Jan 1, 1960.
Cynthia
