Cody’s Data Cleaning Techniques Using SAS® Software

Suspending Error Checking for Known Invalid Dates

As you saw earlier, invalid date values can fill your SAS Log with lots of errors. There are times when you know that invalid date values were used to represent missing dates or other specific values. If you would like to prevent the automatic listing of date errors in the SAS Log, you can use the double question mark (??) modifier in your INPUT statement or with the INPUT function. This modifier prevents the NOTES and data listings to be printed in the SAS Log and also keeps the SAS internal variable _ERROR_ at 0.

Program 4-11 uses the ?? modifier in the INPUT statement to prevent error messages from printing in the SAS Log.

Program 4-11. Suspending Error Checking for Known Invalid Dates by ...