Converting "Friday, April 17, 2009" date

[Baset Mishkat]

How to convert "date" variable "Friday, April 17, 2009" into use able variable for creating "line" graph?

[Joseph Coveney]

generate str string_date = "Friday, April 17, 2009"
generate int date_variable = date(substr(string_date, strpos(string_date, ", ") + 1, .), "MDY")
format date_variable %tdCY-N-D

[William Lisowski]

The output of help datetime tells us by example that a "#" included in the "mask" argument that describes the date in the string will cause one element to be skipped, allowing us to simplify the code above to

. generate int date_variable = date(string_date,"#MDY")

. format date_variable %tdCY-N-D

. list, clean noobs abbreviate(16)

               string_date   date_variable  
    Friday, April 17, 2009      2009-04-17

[Baset Mishkat]

Thank you