Not sure I follow. 

I would like the date formatting information preserved as is implemented when using as.character: 
MaxUpdated_row<-NULL
MaxUpdated_val<- "2013-06-28"

c(MaxUpdated_row, as.character(MaxUpdated_val))
[1] "2013-06-28"

However, when I try to used as.Date(...) I loose the date formatting information:
c(MaxUpdated_row, as.Date(MaxUpdated_val, "%Y-%m-%d"))
[1] 15884


I thought as.Date was an instruction describing how the data element should be represented?


Maybe as.character is the only way to preserve the "date" formatting information in character string format in a vector and then just convert it back later on...


Thanks again.




On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 5:42 PM, Jim Lemon <jim@bitwrit.com.au> wrote:
 
On 03/20/2014 08:46 AM, Jason Rupert wrote:

> MaxUpdated_row<-NULL
> MaxUpdated_val<- "2013-06-28"
>
>
> rbind(MaxUpdated_row, as.Date(MaxUpdated_val, "%Y-%m-%d"))
>        [,1]
> [1,] 15884
>
> c(MaxUpdated_row, as.Date(MaxUpdated_val, "%Y-%m-%d""))
>> [1] 15884
> c(MaxUpdated_row, MaxUpdated_val)
>> [1] 15884
>
> Evidently, I'm again missing something simple, as I would prefer to be able to see the actual date to be shown.
>
> I found a work around, but I don't like it, as I have to convert back to date later:
> c(MaxUpdated_row, as.character(MaxUpdated_val))
>
Hi Jason,
You aren't converting the date to something else, just displaying it as 
a character vector by using the format function. Whenever you form a 
vector, R tries to convert everything in it to the same data type. If 
you _assign_ that vector to something else:

mymax<-c(MaxUpdated_row, as.Date(MaxUpdated_val, "%Y-%m-%d""))

you will have the date type in the MaxUpdated_val and the character type 
in mymax.

Jim
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