agnew@GEMS.VCU.EDU wrote:

>Hey guys, this is wonderful!!! now, my question is that can one >READ that yyyymmdd format??? I just thought of: > >read the 4 digit year > >read the 2 digit month > >read the 2 digit day, > >then hand-assembling the date via the date/time functions.. > >is there a shorter/neater way?

Writing informats for all possible ways to represent dates, or even the most widely known date formats, that might be found would be a big task. In addition to lots of ways to represent a given date in the Gregorian calendar which most of us use, there are half a dozen calendars in use, and dozens more which might be of interest to historians. Even in the Gregorian calendar, the real meaning of historical dates before a certain point depends on the country the date applies to.

It would be good for SI to come out with a format that mimics the functionality found in spreadsheets. Excel can understand a wide format of dates; there's no reason why SAS couldn't do the same.

I have heard a rumor that there will be increased flexibility for reading dates in some future release of SAS. You would be able to specify the field locations and meanings of a date string, and SAS would then parse it properly. Don't know whether or when that will actually be implemented, but SI is certainly aware of some of the problems with dates.