[R] dates in French format
Prof Brian Ripley
ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Thu Jan 31 08:11:48 CET 2008
The output from sessionInfo() the posting guide asked for would have been
very helpful here.
I think the problem is likely to be that these are not standard French
abbreviations according to my systems. On Linux I get
> format(Sys.Date(), "%d-%b-%y")
[1] "31-jan-08"
> format(Sys.Date()-50, "%d-%b-%y")
[1] "12-déc-07"
and on Windows
> format(Sys.Date(), "%d-%b-%y")
[1] "31-janv.-08"
> format(Sys.Date()-50, "%d-%b-%y")
[1] "12-déc.-07"
And yes, chron is US-centric and so only allows English names.
Assuming you know exactly what is meant by 'French short format', I think
the simplest thing to do is to set up a table by
tr <- month.abb
names(tr)[1] <- c("janv") # complete it
x <- "9-janv-08"
x2 <- strsplit(x, "-")
x3 <- sapply(x2, function(x) {x[2] <- tr[x[2]]; paste(x, collapse="-")})
as.Date(x3, format = "%d-%b-%y")
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008, Denis Chabot wrote:
> Hello R users,
>
> I have to import a file with one column containing dates written in
> French short format, such as:
>
> 7-déc-07
> 11-déc-07
> 14-déc-07
> 18-déc-07
> 21-déc-07
> 24-déc-07
> 26-déc-07
> 28-déc-07
> 31-déc-07
> 2-janv-08
> 4-janv-08
> 7-janv-08
> 9-janv-08
> 11-janv-08
> 14-janv-08
> 16-janv-08
> 18-janv-08
>
> There are other columns for other (numeric) variables in the data
> file. In my read.csv2 statement, I indicate that the date column must
> be imported "as.is" to keep it as character.
>
> I would like to transform this into a date object in R. So far I've
> used chron for my dates and times needs, but I am willing to change if
> another object/package will ease the task of importing these dates.
>
> My reading of the chron help led me to believe that the formats it
> understands are only month names in English.
>
> Are there other "formats" I can use with chron, or must I somehow edit
> this character variables to replace French month names by English ones
> (or numbers from 1 to 12)?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Denis
> p.s. I read this in digest mode, so I'll get your replies faster if
> you cc to my email
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
--
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
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