SAS Tip: Program Run Time

[SAS_Tipster]

A couple of useful things to do with the current time:

1. Put it at the top and bottom of your program for a quick & easy way of seeing how long a program took to execute.

  e.g.
  %let datetime_start = %sysfunc(TIME()) ;
  %put START TIME: %sysfunc(datetime(),datetime14.);
  ... program code ...
  %put END TIME: %sysfunc(datetime(),datetime14.);
  %put PROCESSING TIME:  %sysfunc(putn(%sysevalf(%sysfunc(TIME())-&datetime_start.),mmss.)) (mm:ss) ;

2. It's also useful to put this in a footnote for output that will be archived.

  e.g.
  footnote2 "%sysfunc(datetime(),datetime14.)";

This tip was originally posted by Robert Matthews on sasCommunity.org. 

[Tom]

Note that you should use DATETIME() function instead of TIME() so that you can allow for periods that cross from one day into another.

%let datetime_start = %sysfunc(datetime()) ;
%put START TIME: %sysfunc(putn(&datetime_start,datetime19));
  ... program code ...
%let datetime_end = %sysfunc(datetime()) ;
%put END TIME: %sysfunc(putn(&datetime_end,datetime19));
%let run_time = %sysevalf(&datetime_end - &datetime_start);
%put PROCESSING TIME:  %sysfunc(putn(&run_time,mmss)) (mm:ss);