R converting a character to a date

Question

I have a character string of type DEC 2016 and I want to convert it into a date.

I tried:

dates1 <- c("DEC 2016", "FEB 2017", "NOV 2018")

dates2 <- as.Date(dates1,format="%b %Y")

but this did not work.

Thank you for your help.

`%b` won't work because it will want the date to be in your current locale. See `?strptime`. — Roman Luštrik, Nov 13 '16 at 09:28

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 13 '16 at 09:27

2

dates1 <- c("DEC 2016", "FEB 2017", "NOV 2018")

library(zoo)
dates2 <- as.Date(as.yearmon(dates1))

dates2
[1] "2016-12-01" "2017-02-01" "2018-11-01"
class(dates2)
[1] "Date"

You should really do some Googling.

answered Nov 13 '16 at 09:27

lao_zhang

178
8

Thanks. That is great. – adam.888 Nov 13 '16 at 09:32

R converting a character to a date

1 Answers1