[Rd] as.Date (and strptime?) does not recognize "  " as a blank

[Spencer Graves]

p.s.  Is there a way to get XML::readHTMLTable to automatically convert 
" " to a normal blank space?


On 6/25/22 1:37 AM, Spencer Graves wrote:
> Hello, All:
> 
> 
>        When is a space not a space?
> 
> 
>        Consider the following:
> 
> 
>  > (pblmDate <- textutils::HTMLdecode(" 2 Mar 2018"))
> [1] " 2 Mar 2018"
>  > as.Date(pblmDate, format='%e %b %Y')
> [1] NA
>  > as.Date(' 2 Mar 2018', format='%e %b %Y')
> [1] "2018-03-02"
> 
> 
>        Is this a feature or a bug?
> 
> 
>        I can work around it, now that I know what it is, but it took me 
> a few hours to diagnose.
> 
> 
>        Thanks,
>        Spencer Graves
> 
> 
> p.s.  I got this from scraping a website with code that had worked for 
> me roughly 20 months ago.  I suspect that in the interim, someone 
> probably replaced ' 2 Mar 2018' with " 2 Mar 2018".
> 
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