[R] Reading Dates in a csv File

[Frank E Harrell Jr]

Charles and Kimberly Maner wrote:
> Hi all.  I'm reading in a flat, comma-delimited flat file using read.csv.
> It works marvelously for the most part.  I am using the colClasses argument
> to, basically, create numeric, factor and character classes for the columns
> I'm reading in.  However, a couple of the fields in the file are date
> fields.  I'm fully aware that POSIXct can be used as a class, however the
> field must obey, (I think), the standard/default POSIXct format.  Hence the
> following question:  Does anyone have a method they can share to read in a
> non-standard formatted date to convert to POSIXct?  I can read it in then
> convert it, but that's a two pass approach and not as elegant as a single
> pass through read.csv.  I've read, from the documentation, that "[o]therwise
> there needs to be an as method (from package methods) for conversion from
> "character" to the specified formal class" but I do not know and have not
> figured out how to do that.
> 
> Any suggestion(s) would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Charles

The csv.get function in the Hmisc package may do most of what you want.

-- 
Frank E Harrell Jr   Professor and Chair           School of Medicine
                      Department of Biostatistics   Vanderbilt University