Avoiding a SAS error message: "NOTE: Invalid argument to function INPUT"

Question

Is there a way to test if a variable will fail the INPUT conversion process in SAS ? Or alternatively, if the resulting "NOTE: Invalid argument" message can be avoided?

data null;
format test2 date9.;
input test ;
test2=INPUT(PUT(test,8.),yymmdd8.);
if error =1 then do;
error=0;
test2=INPUT(PUT(test-1,8.),yymmdd8.);
end;
put test2=;
cards;
20270229
run;

Answer 1

Instead of doing it this way, you could treat your variable as a character variable at first (since you know some of the values are not real dates anyway), then use the macro provided by AFHood to help you find the invalid values, then fix those values, then convert the variable to a numeric var once all the data are clean.

Answer 2

Just include "??" before the format name. Your example has been modified below...

data null;
format test2 date9.;
input test ;
test2=INPUT(PUT(test,8.),?? yymmdd8.);
if error =1 then do;
error=0;
test2=INPUT(PUT(test-1,8.), ?? yymmdd8.);
end;
put test2=;
cards;
20270229
run;

Answer 3

You could check using something like the following:

data null; format test2 date9.; input test ; test2=INPUT(PUT(test,8.),yymmdd8.); if test ne '' and nmiss(test2) then test2=INPUT(PUT(test-1,8.),yymmdd8.); put test2=; cards; 20270229 run;