In SAS 9.3 and earlier, the default value of the YEARCUTOFF= option is 1920. This default setting is going to cause data integrity issues because any two-digit years of "20" in dates will be assumed to be 1920 instead of 2020. If the intended year in the date is 2020, you must set the YEARCUTOFF= option to a value larger than 1920. The best alternative is to always specify four-digit years in dates to avoid confusion.

Background

The YEARCUTOFF= system option lets you specify which century SAS software should assign to dates with two-digit years used in SAS programs and input data. The YEARCUTOFF= option specifies the first year of a 100-year window in which all two-digit years are assumed to occur. For example, if the YEARCUTOFF= option is set to 1920, which is the default for SAS 9.3 and earlier, all two-digit years are assumed to occur between 1920 and 2019. This behavior means that two-digit years from 20 to 99 are assigned a century prefix of "19," and all two-digit years from 00 to 19 have a century prefix of "20."

The YEARCUTOFF= option affects the interpretation of two-digit years in the following cases:

• Reading date values from external files
• Specifying dates or year values in SAS functions
• Specifying SAS date literals

The YEARCUTOFF= option has no effect in the following cases:

• Processing dates with four-digit years
• Processing dates already stored as SAS date values (the number of days since January 1, 1960)
• Displaying dates with SAS date formats

Workaround

You can specify the YEARCUTOFF= option in an OPTIONS statement, autoexec file, config file, and so on. For the complete list of where you can specify a change to the current option setting, see the YEARCUTOFF= System Option section in SAS(R) 9.3 System Options: Reference, Second Edition.

For a workaround involving using a rolling value for the YEARCUTOFF= option, see SAS Note 65647, "Set up a rolling YEARCUTOFF option value."

The default value for the YEARCUTOFF= option changed in SAS^® 9.4 to 1926. The default setting of 1926 for YEARCUTOFF remains through SAS^® 9.4M6 (TS1M6). Beginning in SAS^® 9.4M7 (TS1M7), the default value for the YEARCUTOFF= system option is 1940. This change makes it easier for customers who are still using two-digit years of "20" to make sure that the date is assigned to 2020. For more information about this change, see SAS Note 46368, "The default value for the YEARCUTOFF= system option has changed in SAS^® 9.4 and beyond."

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