LIBNAME Statement: PC Files on Linux, UNIX, and 64-Bit Microsoft Windows

SASDATEFMT

Changes the SAS date format of a data source column.

Valid in:	DATA and PROC steps
Default value:	none

Syntax
Syntax Description
Details

Syntax

SASDATEFMT=(<data-source-date-column-1>=<SAS date-format>...<data-source-date-column-n>=<SAS date-format>)

Syntax Description

data-source-date-column: specifies the name of a date column in a data source table.
SAS date-format: specifies a SAS date format that has an equivalent informat. For example, DATETIME21.2 is both a SAS format and informat, so it is valid for the SAS date-format argument.

Details

If the date format of a SAS column does not match the date format of the corresponding data column, convert the SAS date values to appropriate values. The SAS DATEFMT= option enables you to convert date values from a SAS date format to different SAS date format.

Use SAS DATEFMT= to prevent date type mismatches under these circumstances:

during input operations to convert data source date values to the correct SAS DATE, TIME, or DATETIME values
during output operations to convert SAS DATE, TIME, or DATETIME values to the correct data source date values

If the SAS date format and the data source date format match, this option is not needed.

The default SAS date format is data source-specific and is determined by the data type of the data source column. See the documentation for your SAS/ACCESS interface.

Note: For non-English date types, SAS automatically converts the data to the SAS type of NUMBER. The SAS DATEFMT= option does not currently handle these date types. You can use a PROC SQL view to convert the source data to a SAS date format, as you retrieve the data. You can also use a format statement in other contexts. [cautionend]

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