[R] Strptime

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 12:58:27PM +0100, Creighton, Sean  wrote:
> Hi
> 
> This code should explain what I'm trying to do
> 
> > strptime("30-Jan-08", "%d-%b-%y")
> [1] "2008-01-30"
> > 
> > format(strptime("30-Jan-08", "%d-%b-%y") , "%b-%y")
> [1] "Jan-08"
> > 
> > strptime(format(strptime("30-Jan-08", "%d-%b-%y") , "%b-%y") ,
> "%b-%y") 
> [1] NA
> 
> 
> I have a string of the form "Jan-08" but I can't seem to get strptime to
> recognise it. The format function can take the date object and using the
> given flags "%b-%y" create a string. It can't, however, seem to go back
> the other way, i.e. as in the line below:
> 
> > strptime(format(strptime("30-Jan-08", "%d-%b-%y") , "%d-%m-%Y"),
> "%d-%m-%Y")
> [1] "2008-01-30"
> 
> Any tips?

Supply (a|any) date to make it a complete date to parse:

> strptime(paste("30", format(strptime("30-Jan-08", "%d-%b-%y") , "%b-%y"), sep="-"), "%d-%b-%y")
[1] "2008-01-30"

Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.