CODEWITHSUNDEEP
spss
San
San

Reputation: 183

Extracting date from string with non-standard structure

In my dataset is birthdate a string. It looks like that:

2003-03-01 00:00:00

I need that it to look like that:

2003.03.01

I have tried to change it in variable view and it did not worked out. Could you please help me to find a solution?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 90

Answers (1)

eli-k
eli-k

Reputation: 11310

I don't know if there is a way to get SPSS to recognize the original date format in your string (anyone?) - so this is a workaround. The following command takes each element of the date from the string, turns it into a number, and inputs all three elements in a date creation command:

COMPUTE  NewDateVar = DATE.DMY(number(char.substr(yourvar,9,2),f4),
                               number(char.substr(yourvar,6,2),f2), 
                               number(char.substr(yourvar,1,4),f2)).
FORMATS  NewDateVar (SDATE10).
EXECUTE.

Upvotes: 1

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