Calculate Time Between Dates

[Leon Edelman]

Sample:
a=01-Jan-50 % January 1 1950
b=16-Feb-18 % February 16 2018



Desired output:
68.17

Essentially I wish to calculate years : b-a.

[William Lisowski]

The following example code may start you in a useful direction.

. set obs 1
number of observations (_N) was 0, now 1

. generate str9 a = "01-Jan-50"

. generate str9 b = "16-Feb-18" 

. // the 2020 below converts 2-digit years > 20 to 19xx, otherwise 20xx
. generate date_a = daily(a,"DMY",2020)

. generate date_b = daily(b,"DMY",2020)

. format %td date_a date_b

. generate age = (date_b-date_a)/365.25

. list, clean noobs

            a           b      date_a      date_b        age  
    01-Jan-50   16-Feb-18   01jan1950   16feb2018   68.12594