SAS 9.3 DATETIME VARIABLE FORMAT AS DATE

Question

I have a datetime22.3 variable which I would like to display as date.

for eg I want to display 17JUL2006:00:00:00.000 as 07/17/2006

How do I do this?

Answer 1

data want;
dt_val1='17JUL2006:00:00:00.000'dt;
dt_you_want=input(substr(put(dt_val1,datetime22.3),1,9),date9.);
format dt ddmmyy10.;
run; 

Answer 2

Formatting dates in SAS can be tricky. One method I've used in a macro is this:

/* get the date time */
%let start_date=%sysfunc(datetime().,10);
/* use the DATETIME informat to format the date */
%let fmt_start_date=%sysfunc(putn(&start_date, DATETIME.)); 
/* format the datetime as a date */
%put "&fmt_start_date."d;

There's a bunch of different ways to format dates. You could also use the FORMAT statement if you're in a data step:

FORMAT STARTDATE YYMMDD10.;

In this case, the format of the column in the data step would give you YYYY-MM-DD and then you can separate the values and reconstruct from there.

There's additional information about SAS informats for dates here: http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/etsug/60372/HTML/default/viewer.htm#etsug_intervals_sect008.htm

And here: http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/etsug/63348/HTML/default/viewer.htm#etsug_intervals_sect009.htm

If you need more info or examples, please let me know.

Best of luck!