There can be a discrepancy between the modified date of a data set in PROC DATASETS, PROC CONTENTS, and other SAS^® components, such as SAS^® Explorer.

The operating system date/times are reported by the SAS Explorer and the list/default in PROC DATASETS, whereas the last modified date reported by PROC CONTENTS is the internal date of the data set when it was opened and modified.

If a data set has been moved, SAS Explorer and the LIST option use the operating system date. The internal date of the data set is not changed because internal modification has not occurred. The two modified date/times might be different, since they report two distinctly defined date/times.

The FINFO function returns the modified date of a file created on UNIX System Services. If FINFO is run against a SAS data set that was created on HFS, the modified date reflects the internal modified date of the SAS data set and not the operating system modified date.