Pull date from long character field

[Ja5ya]

I'd like to pull date from a long character field.

For instance:

Out of another, I get a lovely view of the bay on 8/23/20 and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking on 5/5/20.

From this I'd like my output to be:
date=08/23/2020

date=05/05/2020

Please help. Thanks!

[PGStats]

Can a sentence be "I'll see you on the first day of November 2020" ?

[Ja5ya]

No, this is the data we receive so we can't change the date format.

[PGStats · Accepted solution]

Use regular expressions matching. You can iterate the matches with prxNext:

data want;
if not prxId then prxId + prxParse("@\d\d?/\d\d?/\d\d(\d\d)?@");
set have;
start = 1;
stop = length(text);
call prxnext(prxID, start, stop, text, position, length);
do while (position > 0);
    date = input(substr(text, position, length), ?? mmddyy10.);
    if not missing(date) then output;
    call prxnext(prxID, start, stop, text, position, length);
    end;
keep date;
format date yymmdd10.;
run;

[Ja5ya]

Thanks for the regular expression! This worked out quite well.