[R] formatting date strings

[Jason Turner]

On Wed, Feb 13, 2002 at 03:47:01PM +1100, Jeremy.Whish at csiro.au wrote:
...
> I have a simulation model that out puts dates in a standard dd/mm/yy format
> R reads this as a factor 

Step 1 - you need to read it as plain dumb text first.
In help(read.table), check out the "as.is" option.  You probably want 
as.is=TRUE

> and I cant find anything that will allow me to
> convert them to a date. 

Step 2 - you need to convert the plain dumb text to a date.

R has very sophisticated date/time handling - help(DateTimeClasses)
and help(strptime) will give you a starting background.  See if this
makes sense to you once you've read that.

my.data.frame$text.dates<-strptime(my.data.frame$text.dates,"%d/%m/%y")

Cheers

Jason
-- 
Indigo Industrial Controls Ltd.
64-21-343-545
jasont at indigoindustrial.co.nz
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