Background: I have a code that pulls transactional data starting at the beginning of the current calendar quarter, but from an year ago. For example, if I run the code today (August 16, 2013) it will have to pull all the data from July 1, 2012 onwards.
Problem: I want to automate the starting date for the data pull with a macro variable.
So far, I'm stuck here:
%let ThisYear = %Sysfunc(Date(), YEAR.);
%let LastYear= %eval(&ThisYear-1); /* I get the starting year */
%let QTR_start_month= %eval(3*%Sysfunc(Date(), qtr.)-2); /* this gives me the current quarter starting month. If I run it in August, it outputs 7 for July */
%let start_date=%str(01/%Sysfunc(month(&QTR_start_month))/&lcy);
The final macro variable outputs the date which I want, but in a format which is not recognized by SAS.
I will greatly appreciate any help. Many thanks in advance!
You can either input that date to a date format, or construct it like a SAS date literal ('01JUL2013'), DDMONYY(YY), or construct it as a date value directly.
INTNX is probably your best option here to construct it; you don't need all that work.
%let start_date = %sysfunc(intnx(Quarter,%sysfunc(date()),-4),DATE9.);
%put &start_date;
You can leave DATE9. to use it as a date literal, or remove the ,DATE9. to get the numeric value that can be used directly. You would use this as "&start_Date."d to use the date literal.