Good afternoon,   I know there is some way to do this via %SYSFUNC (or so I have heard), but I am having a very difficult time getting much to work and was wondering if anyone else here has ever encountered this same problem.   Basically, all I need to do is have this macro return a numeric result, so that I can utilize it something like:   data s1 ; date_x = 22; date_y = 33; date_z = %getepoch(path) ; run;quit;   The point of the macro itself is simply to derive the Unix epoch time for a supplied (non-epoch'ed) date.   I have most of what I need already working, but I still don't think the macro is returning an assignable value.   An additional problem or question might be:  is there any way to replicate the Powershell execution piece of functionality without invoking 'filename process pipe' ?   I think that section in particular is breaking something in the SAS interpreter. I have pasted a screenshot of that at the following URL:  output-log-d — ImgBB (ibb.co)   [actual URL plaintext =  https://ibb.co/K9hssG3]   Code snippet is provided below. Side note: I'm pretty sure my numeric format or bestd20 is wrong somehow (still working on that). Thanks in advance if anyone has some ideas on how to fix this.   /*       code       */    %macro getepoch(twopath); %let twopath = %sysfunc(quote(%qsysfunc(dequote(&path)))); filename process pipe "powershell -File C:\Temp\gepoch.ps1 "&twopath.""; data processes; infile process ; length time 8; format time bestd20. ; input time; run ; quit; proc sql; select time into :t2 from processes ; quit; %put &t2. ; %mend getepoch; %let path="C:\Temp\output9.txt" ; %getepoch(path) ; data s1 ; x = 22; y = 33; z = %getepoch(path) ; run;quit;     ... View more