[R] Help regading time series data reading

[Tolga Uzuner]

Dear R-Users,

Have a question about reading in some data and manipulating dates. I  
have a data set in excel which looks like this:

Date                 PEG        ETN        HSP        PTC
13/10/2004        41.92        64.75        29.86        9.27
14/10/2004        41.93        61.79        29.98        9.14
15/10/2004        41.69        62.7        30.09        9.04
18/10/2004        41.37        62.14        30.39        8.96
19/10/2004        41.01        61.98        29.61        9.02
20/10/2004        41.01        61.98        30.25        9

I have used read.table by saving the sheety above in tab format to  
read this in but am
having some difficulties:
- the dates above do not seem to be getting read in in date format:  
how can I force this ?
- I actually have two, and not one data set, and would like to  
synchronise them by date
(exclude from both dates which are not in both): is there an easy way  
to do this ?

Thanks,
Tolga