SAS (Statistical Analysis System) is a programming language that is used for statistical analysis. It reads data from commonly used spreadsheets, databases and more and provides the output of the analysis in the form of tables, graphs, HTML files, PDF files and more.
Generally speaking, a timestamp is an arrangement of characters that identify when a particular event took place. It usually provides the date and time of the day and is sometimes precise to even a fraction of a second. SAS makes use of types Timestamps for dates that I have explained below:
- Date Timestamp: This depicts the number of days between the current timestamp (today) and Midnight (GMT) of January 1, 1960.
- Datetime Timestamp: This gives the number of seconds between the current timestamp and Midnight (GMT) of January 1, 1960.
One question that can arise is that why January 1, 1960 was chosen. Well, one story tells us that the SAS founders wanted to use the approximate date of birth of the IBM 370 system. This was a model range of mainframe computers by IBM that were announced as successors to the famous IBM 360 family.
In this article we will be exploring 3 Website to help you to convert SAS timestamps to human readable date.
1. Epoch converter
This is a good website that you can use to convert SAS date timestamp as well as datetime timestamp to human readable date. All that you need to do is type or paste the timestamp value in the textbox provided for the purpose and click on the button beside it to convert it to human date.
The website automatically identifies the type of timestamp (date / datetime) and converts it accordingly in real-time. The converted date / time is displayed for GMT as well as your local time zone.
Click here to visit Epoch Converter.
2. Unix Timer
Let’s move on to the next SAS timestamp converter. This website allows a two conversion which means that you can convert SAS timestamps (datetime) to human readable date as well as the other way round.
To convert SAS timestamps to human date, type or paste the datetime timestamp value in the first box and click on the button ‘SAS Timestamp to Human-Readable’ to get the corresponding date time for GMT as well as your present time zone. You must ensure that you are using the timestamps in seconds, milliseconds, microseconds etc.
To convert human date to SAS timestamp, specify the date and time using the boxes that have been provided, choose the time zone (GMT / local time) and then click on the button ‘Human-Readable to Timestamp’ to get the SAS datetime timestamp in seconds or milliseconds.
Click here to navigate to Unix Timer
3. SAS Tips
This is the third and the final converter that helps you to convert human date to SAS date as datetime timestamp. All that you must do is type the date or the date and time in the boxes that have been provided depending upon the output that you require. The website will automatically convert the human date to SAS timestamps and display them it real-time.
Unlike the previous website, this one does not allow the reverse conversion from SAS timestamp to human readable date.
To visit SAS tips, click here.
You must ensure that you use the proper date or datetime format while using the above SAS timestamp converters. Since all of the above websites fundamentally rely on mathematical formulae, it doesn’t make any difference as to which one you choose since all will give the same result.
