Written By Quentin McMullen

In 1986 the Beastie Boys released their classic debut album, License to Ill, and the last track posed a question: “What’s the time?”  The Beasties answered with an anthem, “It’s time to get ill.”  I think Peter Crawford, SAS programmer extraordinaire, would have answered more simply.  What time is it?  It’s %now.

%Now – a Timestamp Macro

%Now generates a timestamp.   It’s a simple SAS macro, but despite its simplicity, it has a lot to teach about macro design.  In fact, Peter wrote an entire paper about the macro, so I won’t repeat the lessons.

The macro is:

%MACRO now( fmt= DATETIME23.3 ) /DES= 'timestamp' ;    %SYSFUNC( DATETIME(), &fmt ) %MEND now ;

It’s a utility macro, and I have it in my autocall library, so that it’s always there when I want it.

I often use it in footnotes. This code snippet:

Read the entire article at Business Intelligence Notes fro SAS Users.