title: SAS Converting Characters/Number to Numbers
body: <p>I am looking for a way to convert the characters into numbers in SAS so that I can use the max function. Also, it would be helpful if the characters and only the numbers are kept. Below is a list of data for a column in a SAS table. </p>
  
  <p><strong>Column UNK</strong><br>
  abc20140714<br>
  abc20140714x<br>
  abc20140714xyz<br>
  123_abc20140714_xyz<br>
  abc20150718  </p>
  
  <p>After stripping out the number values from the column, I would then group the data and use the max function in SAS, which should only generate the value 20150718.  </p>
  
  <p>To avoid any confusion, my question, is there a way to strip out the non-numeric values, and then convert the column into a numeric column so I can use the max function? </p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>