[R] Problems Dating....

[David Winsemius]

On Jun 1, 2011, at 5:14 PM, Struckmeier, Nathanael wrote:

> I'll give this a try and mess with what format to convert it to.  
> Thanks
> again!
>
You need to decide whether to use "%d/%m/%Y" or "%m/%d/%" , since the  
information you provided so far leaves that undetermined.

-- 
David.
>
>
> Hi Nat,
>
> I guess something like
> as.Date(as.character("3/4/2007"),format="%d/%m/%Y")
> should work - as.character() coerces the factors to characters, which
> the as.Date() function can work with, given the right format argument.
>
> HTH
> Stephan
>
>
> Am 01.06.2011 22:59, schrieb Struckmeier, Nathanael:
>> I'm trying to convert a column in a data frame with dates from a
>> "Factor" type to a "Date Object" but I am encountering and error. (I
> am
>> having trouble plotting an x,y scatter and I suspect it's something
> with
>> my data format). I have a table with two columns and 8,000 rows.
>>
>>> dsort=read.delim("C:\\Documents and Settings\\E066582\\My
>> Documents\\R\\R-2.13.0\\bin\\dsort.txt")
>>
>>
>>
>> "dsort"                                                #name of
>> data.frame
>>
>>> colnames(dsort)[1]                     #name of column 1
>>
>> [1] "Date"
>>
>>> colnames(dsort)[2]                     #name of column 2
>>
>> [1] "Qty"
>>
>>> class(dsort$Date)                         #checked data type of
> column
>> "Date" and it came back as a factor
>>
>> [1] "factor"
>>
>>> Date2=as.Date(dsort$Date)    #attempt at changing the data type from
> a
>> factor to a date object (see error below).
>>
>> Error in charToDate(x) :
>>
>>   character string is not in a standard unambiguous format
>>
>>
>>
>> Dates in my table are listed in "3/4/2007" format.
>>
>> StatBat2
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
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> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT