Does your SAS code know what time it is? Add a timestamp.

In 1986 the Beastie Boys released their classic debut album, License to Ill, and the last track posed a question: “What’s the time?”  The Beasties answered with an anthem, “It’s time to get ill.”  I think Peter Crawford, SAS programmer extraordinaire, would have answered more simply.  What time is it?  It’s %now. %Now – a Timestamp Macro %Now generates a timestamp.   It’s a simple SAS macro, but despite its simplicity, it has a lot to teach about macro design.  In fact, Peter wrote an entire paper about the macro, so I won’t repeat the lessons. The macro is: %MACRO now( fmt= DATETIME23.3 ) /DES= ‘timestamp’ ; %SYSFUNC( DATETIME(), &fmt ) %MEND now ; It’s a utility macro, and I have it in my autocall library, so that it’s always there when I want it. I often use it in footnotes. This code snippet: Will produce a footnote with a timestamp in it:   I also add timestamps to file names.  Here, I add a timestamp to the log file from a nightly job.  The default format (DATETIME23.3) is fine for a footnote.  For file names, I typically format the timestamp as YYYYMMDDThhmmss, which maintains readability and also sorts in chronological […]

The post Does your SAS code know what time it is? Add a timestamp. appeared first on Business Intelligence Notes for SAS® BI Users. Written by Quentin McMullen.