converting format (from date to numeric) using SAS
I am working with a dataset in SAS, containing many variables.
One of these variables is a DATE variable and it has a date/time format. It looks like this:
12FEB97:00:00:00
27MAR97:00:00:00
14APR97:00:00:00
Now the thing is that I would like to convert this variable into a NUMERIC format. And I would like to get the following result (based on the previously shown 3 examples):
199702
199703
199704
Do you have any ideas how to do it? I already read through many docs, pdfs etc. but still could not find a proper solution yet.
Thank you very much!
Answer
First, you need to extract the date from your datetime variable. You can use the datepart function:
date = datepart(var);
Then, you want to put this variable (which will still be coded as a date number) into a number that you can read the year and month. Do this with putn:
date_as_num = putn(date,'yymmn6.');