[R] Error in make.names(col.names, unique = TRUE) : invalid multibyte string at '<ca>14 <4a>ULY 2012'

[Dalthorp, Daniel]

Hi Ken,
Without seeing your .csv file or how you are trying to read it, it's tough
to diagnose the trouble. I inserted commas between the columns in your data
snippet, pasted into Excel, saved as .csv file called "datesfile.csv" in
the R working directory. Then, the following worked fine for me:

junk<-read.csv("datesfile.csv", header = TRUE)
junk # is a dataframe with headers Gender, DOB, etc.

 # Age at screening (in days):
as.Date(junk$Screen.Date,format="%d %B %Y")-as.Date(junk$DOB,format="%d %B
%Y")

# Age at screening (in years):
as.numeric(as.Date(junk$Screen.Date,format="%d %B
%Y")-as.Date(junk$DOB,format="%d %B %Y"))/365.2425

I hope this helps.

-Dan


On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 11:34 AM, KMNanus <kmnanus at gmail.com> wrote:

> I’m trying to read in the data below from an Excel file (as a .csv file)
> in  order to create an age (in years.%years) but am getting the error
> message in the subject line.
>
> I’ve tried saving the dates as dates in Excel and tried saving the dates
> as text, both give me the same error message.  Can someone pls tell me what
> I’m doing wrong?
>
> Gender  DOB     Diagnosis       Screen Date
> Male     14 JULY 2012   No       05 OCTOBER 2015
> Female   31 OCTOBER 2009        No       30 NOVEMBER 2015
> Female   08 JULY 2009   No       06 DECEMBER 2015
> Male     04 JUNE 2011   NA       11 JANUARY 2016
> Female   21 AUGUST 2009 Yes      01 FEBRUARY 2016
> Male     05 NOVEMBER 2007       No       16 FEBRUARY 2016
> Male     01 JUNE 2009   NA       29 FEBRUARY 2016
>
>
>
> Ken
> kmnanus at gmail.com
> 914-450-0816 (tel)
> 347-730-4813 (fax)
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.




-- 
Dan Dalthorp, PhD
USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center
Forest Sciences Lab, Rm 189
3200 SW Jefferson Way
Corvallis, OR 97331
ph: 541-750-0953
ddalthorp at usgs.gov

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