What is a simple, concise way to convert an alpha field with date values into a date field? The dates values are in the following format with no leading zero on the day number: 1-Aug or 23-Aug. Rather than coding the logic to do it the "long" way (parsing the value, adding the leading zero, etc.), I would prefer something concise. The year can be obtained from a variable.

Thank you,

John

This message has been edited. Last edited by: JohnB,

If it's not here, then, it's the long way...

Thanks, Tom. I had checked the documentation before posting this. I was hoping someone had done this before and could provide an example of either one expression with nested functions or just a few defined fields to accomplish this.

John,

This worked for me:

  
-SET &JB='1 Aug 2009';
DEFINE FILE CAR
DT/DMYY='&JB';
END
TABLE FILE CAR
PRINT DT BY COUNTRY
END

So, if your "date" is '1-Aug' and the year comes from somewhere else, I suggest you replace the hyphen with a space and concatenate the year and you should be home.