CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rtimecompare
Head and toes
Head and toes

Reputation: 659

Comparing timestamps in different formats in R

I have two timestamps

 a<-"2016-11-24 08:30:00"
 b<-"31Jul2016 21:26:00"

I want to compare which timestamp is earlier. How can I do that? How can I make sure the timestamps are in the same format so that they are comparable?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 197

Answers (2)

Ronak Shah
Ronak Shah

Reputation: 388817

We can use anytime library to compare date-time in different formats. It converts them into "POSIXct" "POSIXt" class so that it is easy to compare them.

library(anytime)
anytime(a) > anytime(b)
#[1] TRUE

where, 

anytime(a)
#[1] "2016-11-24 08:30:00 IST"
anytime(b)
#[1] "2016-07-31 21:26:00 IST"

Upvotes: 1

ottlngr
ottlngr

Reputation: 1247

Use strptimeto covert you character to date:

a <- "2016-11-24 08:30:00"
b <- "31Jul2016 21:26:00"

aa <- strptime(a, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
bb <- strptime(b, "%d%b%Y %H:%M:%S")

Then you can check which timestamp is earlier.

> aa < xx
[1] FALSE

> aa > xx
[1] TRUE

Upvotes: 1

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