SAS Dates 2

[JamesH122]

I'm trying to create a variable of an individuals age from a date today variable (SAS format date9.) and a date of birth variable (SAS format datetime).

I've tried the 'intck' statement but the date variables formats seem incompatible.

Can anyone tell me what the best way to go about creating this variable - cheers.

 

[shenniko]

Hi James,

Im not 100% sure but im guessing you'll need to cut the date from the datetime field.

Try the below:-

Years = intck('year', datepart(DateTimeVar), DateVar);

Robbie

 

[JamesH122]

Thanks for that Robbie, worked a treat - much appreciated. Regards James.

 

[ChrisW75]

Hmmm, I posted a response, but when they fixed it by moving your second post to a new thread, they removed my response, so I'd better re-post it.
INTCK is not an adequate method for determining a persons age for the reasons detailed in this article:-

http://support.sas.com/ctx/samples/index.jsp?sid=271

Simply put, the INTCK function only counts the number of times the 1st of the time period chosen occurs between the 2 dates. IE in the previous example using "YEAR", it counts the number of times 1st of January appears between the 2 dates, therefore if todays date is the 2nd of January, and the persons date of birth is the 30th of December last year, they will be given an age of 1 year. This is obviously wrong.
You need to be REALLY cautious when using INTCK.
The article linked above walks you through the steps required to accurately calculate a persons age, and contains it all in a one liner at the end, so I recommmend reading it all the way through.
Cheers.

Chris
Business Analyst, Code Monkey, Data Wrangler.
SAS Guru.