When reading numeric data in SAS, leading zeros do not effect the value assigned to the variable and are not stored with the value. This convention is also used by SAS date informats to interpret all "components" of a date value. As a result, year values of 0000-0099 are treated as two-digit years, and the YEARCUTOFF= system option is used to assign the century. For example:

  DATE=INPUT('01JAN0002',DATE9.);

Assuming YEARCUTOFF=1920 (the Version 8 default), the variable DATE is correctly assigned the value of January 1, 2002.

The following example illustrates the same convention applied to the "day" component of the date. DATE is assigned the same value as above:

  DATE=INPUT('0001JAN02',DATE9.);

This behavior is by design and not considered a bug.

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