CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rdate
notrockstar
notrockstar

Reputation: 853

Change factor to a date format in R

I have a file with dates in the format YYYY-mm. I am trying to prepare my data for a time series analysis and therefore need to convert the formats from factor to a Date format.

What I've tried: 

x <- '2011-11'
as.Date(as.character(a), "%Y-%m")

the last line gives me an output NA.

Thank you!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 902

Answers (2)

Joshua Ulrich
Joshua Ulrich

Reputation: 176648

"2011-11" is not a date (where's the day)? Either add a day:

a <- '2011-11'
as.Date(paste0(a,'-01'))

or use zoo's yearmon class:

library(zoo)
as.yearmon(a)

Upvotes: 5

Matthew Plourde
Matthew Plourde

Reputation: 44614

'2011-11' isn't a date. Use paste(your.year.month.strs, '01', sep='-') to add the day component to your strings, then call as.Date with "%Y-%m-%d".

Upvotes: 2

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