The format $DATE was not found or could not be loaded

[242526GEN]

Can anyone tell me what is wrong with this statement. I keep getting the error. The format $DATE was not found or could not be loaded. I am new to using SAS. I think should work.


(Statement)
ckdate2 = put(symget ('batparm3'), date9.);

(Error)
The format $DATE was not found or could not be loaded.

 

[teralearner]

That is because your parameter batparm3 is not a SAS date.
Let's look the following example:

1 data tst;
2 date1 = '01jan2003'd;
3 date2 = put(date1, date9.);
4 run;

NOTE: The data set WORK.TST has 1 observations and 2 variables.
NOTE: DATA statement used:
real time 0.41 seconds
cpu time 0.00 seconds

The data looks like this:

obs date1 date2
1 15706 01JAN2003

Please note that date1 is a number! SAS date is stored as numerical field, with Jan 1 1960 as 1, and can be expressed with different format.

Let's look at what happens if you have a character field:

6 data tst;
7 date1 = '01jan2003';
NOTE: SCL source line.
8 date2 = put(date1, date9.);
------
48
ERROR 48-59: The format $DATE was not found or could not be loaded.

9 run;

That is the error you got.

Please provider you parameter along with what you like to have for ckdate2. We will be able to help you from there.

 

[242526GEN]

Thanks so much. That was really helpful.