SAS date operation within proc sql

Question

I'm very new to SAS, and am trying to modify this piece of code

proc sql;
select a, Current_Date - 2 - b as some_date
from table

Current_Date is a function in sas. I'm trying to replace it with my own date. a and b are column names in a database i'm connecting to. I tried changing Current_Date to '12nov2013'd, but it doesn't seem to work.

I tried:

1.

%let startFrom = '12nov2013'd;
proc sql;
  select a, &startFrom - 2 - b as some_date
from table

this doesn't work.

2.

proc sql;
  select a, input('12nov2013',date9.) - 2 - b as some_date
from table

This doesn't work

How should Ii do this date operation in SAS

3.

proc sql;
  select a, intck('DAY','19nov2015'd,rqo_tran_date_alt) as TranMonth
from table

this also doesn't work

What does "doesn't work" mean? Gives an error? Gives incorrect answer? What answer? Would be helpful to provide example input dataset and example results/desired results. — Joe, Mar 29 '16 at 19:28

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 29 '16 at 19:30

Nothing really wrong with your first example, though it could be improved.

%let startFrom = '12nov2013'd;

data have;
  input a $ b;
  datalines;
Zero 0
Five 5
Ten 10
Hundred 100
;;;;
run;


proc sql;
  select a, &startFrom - 2 - b as some_date format=date9.
  from have;
quit;

Adding the format is pretty helpful usually, though not required. This assumes b is a numeric variable containing a number of days. If it contains anything else, or is character, this won't necessarily give you the correct result.

SAS date operation within proc sql

1 Answers1