Are there any suggestions for reading a time string to a SAS dateTime value:

I have a string variable with values like:

"1999/05/01 04:05"

to convert it to a dateTime I do the following:

dtemp = substr (tradper,1,10); tradeDate = input (dtemp, yymmdd10.); ttemp = substr (tradper,12,6); tradeTime = input (ttemp, time5.);

bidDateTime = tradeDate * (60*60*24) + tradeTime;

I was wondering if this could be done with an (custom?) informat.

The only informat that came close was DATETIMEw. - but this is for ddmmyyyy hh:mm:ss format whereas I have yyyymmdd hh:mm:ss format.

Any suggestions would be appreciated - (coz this operation is done millions of times).

Perhaps I should just stick with what works :-)

Cheers, Christopher

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Christopher Short Senior Economist Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics

email: cshort@abare.gov.au ph: +61 2 6272 2083 fax: +61 2 6272 2328