INTCK (Duration Measurement) (SAS)

I recently had to re-visit a SAS project that I had previously completed. This particular project required that I create an additional variable within an existing data set, this variable was to store the difference of days which occurred between two pre-existing date values. In running the code, it occurred to me that I had not previously discussed the function necessary to obtain such a result. Therefore, this will be the topic of todays article.

The SAS function, INTCK, serves as a way of determining a selected duration of time which has elapsed between two SAS variables.

The form of the function is as follows:

INTCK(‘<measured duration>’ , <DATEA>, <DATEB>);

For example, if you wanted to measure the days that occurred between variable DATEA and DATEB, the code would resemble:

INTCK(‘day’ , DATEA, DATEB);

You will need to store the output, so we will create a new variable, DATEC, to do so. The code would then resemble:

DATEC = INTCK(‘day’ , DATEA, DATEB);

This function can evaluate many different measurements of time, however, I will only mention those that are most commonly utilized.

DATEC = INTCK(‘day’ , DATEA, DATEB); /* Days */

DATEC = INTCK(‘week’ , DATEA, DATEB); /* Weeks */

DATEC = INTCK(‘month’ , DATEA, DATEB); /* Months */

DATEC = INTCK(‘year’ , DATEA, DATEB); /* Years */

DATEC = INTCK(‘qtr’ , DATEA, DATEB); /* Quarters */

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!IMPORTANT NOTE! - INTCK() only returns INTEGERS! Meaning, that if a week and a half elapsed, and <INTCK(‘week’, x , y)> was being utilized, then the result would be 1, as only 1 WHOLE week has lapsed in duration.

In the next article, I will return to discussing the R coding language, specifically, hypothesis tests and error types.