Dear Epi list,

This is not a strictly epidemiological question, but an issue that anyone
might face if presented with a dataset containing dates in a non-gregorian
format.

I am currently developing a database (in MS Access) for a public health
study, the results of which I intend to analyse in R.  I have a small
problem, in that the date each patient visits the clinic will be entered
into the database in the Persian  / Jalali calendar format - e.g. today's
date in the Persian calendar is 18.10.1387.   For the analysis however I
need these dates to be converted to Gregorian, so that I can have months on
the x axis of plots, etc.

Does anyone know of a function / some code already written that could do
this conversion in R?  It is much too complex for me to figure out (since
the Persian new year starts on 21st March, and although there are also 12
months they have different lengths to gregorian months).  I'm guessing it
would require loops and such but this is beyond my current level of R
knowledge.

I have found some online tools that do the conversion of individual dates,
but there seems to be nothing out there that would convert a whole dataset's
worth of dates.

Any suggestions much appreciated,
With best wishes,
Amy


-- 
Amy Mikhail
Program Manager, ACTc Afghanistan Malaria Project
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
HPRO, Charahi-e-Shahid, Shar-e-Naw, Kabul, Afghanistan

Email (Afg): amy.mikhail@googlemail.com
Email (UK): Amy.Mikhail@lshtm.ac.uk
Tel (Afg): +93 (0)706 126627
Tel (UK): +44 (0)781 4176107

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

