Date variable to String

[William Bradley]

Hello all,

I have a date variable in the form of ddmmyyyy, for example :31oct2019 . This date variable is a numeric (long) variable. I would like to convert it to a string variable but when I do that, the format is messed up. For example, the date 31oct2019 becomes 21853. Anyone know how to get the format back to ddmmyyyy?

Thanks!

[Andrew Musau]

clear
input float date
21853
end

gen wanted= string(date, "%tdDmCY")

l

Res.:

. l

     +-------------------+
     |  date      wanted |
     |-------------------|
  1. | 21853   31Oct2019 |
     +-------------------+

.

I do not know what you need to do with a string date, but just in case you want to change the display format, I will include code for that too.

format date %tdDmCY

[William Bradley]

Great thanks Andrew that works