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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!

Triad sou.
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Laszlo
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1 Answers1

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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.');
BenMorel
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itzy
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    Wonderful, it is working, wonderful! Thank you very much dear itzy, you cannot even imagine how happy I am right now :) – Laszlo Oct 12 '11 at 14:33
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    Bingo! Thank you, I've been hunting for this solution for a few hours now. Simple and concise. – William M-B Jan 06 '14 at 18:44