Although the latest release of SAS(r) Software for most operating system is Year 2000 compliant, it is crucial that you read the information in this letter and take appropriate action to make sure that your programs and applications that use the SAS System will process dates correctly before, during, and after the Year 2000.

SAS Software (after Release 6.04) uses the YEARCUTOFF= option to determine what century prefix a two-digit year should be associated with.  For example, if you specify YEARCUTOFF=1900, all two-digit years processed by SAS applications will be assumed to be between 1900 and 1999; if YEARCUTOFF=1950 is specified, all two-digit years between 50 and 99 are assumed to be in the 1900s, while all two-digit years from 99 to 49 are assumed to be from 2000 to 2049.

The default value of YEARCUTOFF= is 1900.  This means that all two-digit years processed by SAS Software are assumed to be in the 1990s, and processing any date information with values greater than December 31, 1999 may produce incorrect results if they are represented with two-digit years.  For Version 7 and Version 8 SAS software, the default value of YEARCUTOFF= option is 1920.

To provide the correct processing of two-digit years by SAS Software, you should determine the value of the YEARCUTOFF= option on your system, and modify it if necessary.  To determine the value of the YEARCUTOFF= option, simple invoke the SAS system and submit the following statements:

proc options option=yearcutoff; run; 

The value of the YEARCUTOFF= option will be displayed in the SAS log.  If the YEARCUTOFF= option is set to 1900, we suggest modifying it to a value between 1920 and 1950.  The optimum value will depend on the range of dates that you typically process with your SAS applications.  If you do not anticipate processing date values greater than 2020, you may want to set YEARCUTOFF= 1920; if your SAS applications process dates greater than 2020, you may want to set YEARCUTOFF= to a higher value, such as 1930 or 1950.

Changing the value of the YEARCUTOFF= option

Use a text editor to create an autoexec.sas file in your SAS directory (i.e. c:\sas\autoexec.sas).  The SAS autoexec file contains SAS statements that are executed immediately after the SAS system initializes and before any user input is accepted.

You can create it using the SAS text editor and save it using the Save As dialog box.  If you do not use the SAS text editor, be sure to use another ASCII text editor (such as Notepad).

To set the YEARCUTOFF= option to 1920, enter in the autoexec.sas file:

options yearcutoff = 1920;

Additional information is available at http://www.sas.com/y2k and for technical assistance contact the SAS Representative at 777-6015.