title: converting format (from date to numeric) using SAS
body: <p>I am working with a dataset in SAS, containing many variables.</p>
  
  <p>One of these variables is a DATE variable and it has a date/time format. It looks like this:  </p>
  
  <pre><code>12FEB97:00:00:00  
  27MAR97:00:00:00  
  14APR97:00:00:00
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now the thing is that I would like to convert this variable into a NUMERIC format. And I would like to get the following result (based on the previously shown 3 examples):  </p>
  
  <pre><code>199702  
  199703  
  199704  
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Do you have any ideas how to do it? I already read through many docs, pdfs etc. but still could not find a proper solution yet.<br>
  Thank you very much!</p>