NC STATE University
SAS Consulting, Department of Statistics 

THE YEARCUTOFF OPTION

The YEARCUTOFF= option is used by SAS software to assign a century prefix to two digit years used in SAS programs and input data. In order to make your SAS applications Year 2000 compliant, it is important to understand and correctly use the YEARCUTOFF= option.

Default YEARCUTOFF= Settings

SAS version 6.12: The default setting is yearcutoff=1900

SAS version 7 and 8: The default setting is yearcutoff=1920

Specifying Alternative YEARCUTOFF= Settings

The simplest way to change the setting is in the system configuration file. The system configuration file is located in the root of your SAS Installation directory.
In Version 6, the file is named CONFIG.SAS
In Version 7, the file is named SASV7.CFG
In Version 8, the file is named SASV8.CFG

To modify the default YEARCUTOFF= value, edit the configuration file using either the SAS Program Editor or an ASCII text editor such as Notepad (not a word processor). If a value is specified in the file, it can be changed; otherwise a line specifying the desired value should be added at the top of the file--for example: -yearcutoff 1920

It is recommended that you set yearcutoff=1920 in version 6. This will make the YEARCUTOFF= consistent across all versions.

Checking Your Settings

Issue the following statemetns to verify the setting of YEARCUTOFF= :     proc options option=yearcutoff; run;

For more information check the following SAS website: TS618.html


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Maintained by:Sandy Donaghy and Joy Smith
Last Modified: Tuesday, 21-Dec-1999 10:21:04 EST
Filename: /working_groups/sas/faq/yearcutoff.html