[R] Compiling date

[David Scott]

On Mon, 8 Sep 2008, Megh Dal wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have following kind of dataset (all are dates) in my Excel sheet.
>
> 09/08/08
> 09/05/08
> 09/04/08
> 09/02/08
> 09/01/08
> 29/08/2008
> 28/08/2008
> 27/08/2008
> 26/08/2008
> 25/08/2008
> 22/08/2008
> 21/08/2008
> 20/08/2008
> 18/08/2008
> 14/08/2008
> 13/08/2008
> 08/12/08
> 08/11/08
> 08/08/08
> 08/07/08
>
> However I want to use R to compile those data to make all dates in same 
> format. Can anyone please tell me any automated way for doing that?
>

Well you have to read them in as character first. Then use sub to make the 
two digit years into four digits. The following could probably be improved 
by a regular expression whiz, but works:

> strngs <- c("06/05/08","23/11/2008")
> sub("([0-9][0-9]/[0-9][0-9]/)([0-9][0-9]$)","\\120\\2",strngs)
[1] "06/05/2008" "23/11/2008"


David Scott



_________________________________________________________________
David Scott	Department of Statistics, Tamaki Campus
 		The University of Auckland, PB 92019
 		Auckland 1142,    NEW ZEALAND
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Email:	d.scott at auckland.ac.nz

Graduate Officer, Department of Statistics
Director of Consulting, Department of Statistics