There is an *undocumented* ISO 8601 SAS format, is8601dtX.X. Using this format I modified Chang's example to come up with timestamp2 and 3 below.

For anyone curious there is comparable informat with the same name. I added a short data step to the code below to show it off as well.

I originally found the iso8601 format and informat while testing the xml libname engine in version 8.2, but now I have version 8.2 and version 9.0 on my pc. I tell you this because the informat doesn't seem to work in 8.2 now, while the format works in both versions. The problem might be due to a hard drive crash I had a couple months ago. I had to reload SAS from scratch and maybe I didn't download the updated 8.2 sxle engine. In short, your results may vary. ; - )

Try running the following code.

%let timestamp1=%sysfunc(Date(),yymmddn8.)T%sysfunc(compress(%sysfunc (Time(),time.),:)); %let timestamp2=%sysfunc(Datetime(),is8601dt26.6); %let timestamp3=%sysfunc(compress(%sysfunc (Datetime(),is8601dt26.0),-:));

%put timestamp1=&timestamp1.; %put timestamp2=&timestamp2.; %put timestamp3=&timestamp3.;

data _null_; _dt_=input("&timestamp2",is8601dt26.6); _dt2_=put(_dt_,datetime21.2); put _dt_=; put _dt2_=; run;

which yields the following in version 9.0

timestamp1=20040622T180658 ---> Mark/Chang's code timestamp2=2004-06-22T18:06:58.062000 timestamp3=20040622T180658

_dt_=1403546818.1 _dt2_=22JUN2004:18:06:58.06

Shawn Edney

Analyst/Programmer CSC

"Chang Y. Chung" <chang_y_chung@HO To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU TMAIL.COM> cc: Sent by: "SAS(r) Subject: Re: Best way to Include data and time in a filename Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.U GA.EDU>

06/22/2004 02:09 PM Please respond to "Chang Y. Chung"

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 10:59:56 -0700, Terjeson, Mark <TERJEM@DSHS.WA.GOV> wrote:

>Hi David, > >One of many schemes is to utilize the decending >order of the units-of-measure so that automatic >sorting of filenames keeps the files in your >directory in chronological order. Sometimes I >may have multiple files per minute, so I take >it down to seconds. e.g. CCYYMMDDHHMMSS > > > >data test; > a=1; >run; > > * CCYYMMDDHHMMSS ; >%let >timestamp=%sysfunc(Date(),yymmddn8.)%sysfunc(compress(%sysfunc(Time (),time.) >,:)); > > >proc export data=test > outfile= "c:\temp\FINAL_&timestamp..xls" > dbms=excel2000 replace; >run;

Hi, Mark,

Beautiful! Adding what ISO 8601 suggests, this could be a one-liner:

%macro timeStamp; %*-- ISO 8601 suggests a latin capital letter T for a separater --*; %*;%sysfunc(Date(),yymmddn8.)T%sysfunc(compress(%sysfunc(Time(),time.),:))

%mend;

%put ***%timeStamp***; /* on log ***20040622T140718*** */