⨳ random dates ⨳
2009 Jul 15, Wednesday
⨳ 1 minute read ⨳ 117 words ⨳ date values ⨳ do loop ⨳ sas ⨳this is a cross posting from this sas discussion forum thread.
assuming you know the min and max of allowable dates (01jan2005 - 30jun2009, for example), you can use random functions.
data randates;
mindate='01jan2005'd;
maxdate='30jun2009'd;
range = maxdate-mindate+1;
format mindate maxdate randate date9.;
do i = 1 to 10000;
RanDate = mindate + int(ranuni(12345)*range);
output;
end;
run;
using this method, you don’t need to find the number of days in a given month/year, SAS just knows.
a simple min/max check shows the date limits were respected
proc sql;
select distinct
min(randate) format=date9.,
max(randate) format=date9.
from randates;
quit;
output
01JAN2005 30JUN2009