CODEWITHSUNDEEP
runixtime
MathsIsHard
MathsIsHard

Reputation: 277

Converting Date-Time to UNIX Time

I'm hoping someone here knows what's going on. I'm having this strange issue where when I'm trying to convert some date/times to UNIX time I get negative numbers, here is my code for reference:

> foo <- '4/1/2017 00:02:23'
> alpha = as.POSIXct(foo)
> alpha
[1] "0004-01-20 LMT"
> beta = as.numeric(alpha)
> beta
[1] -62039347125 #Why?!?!?!

So basically, I go through the above and I end up with a negative number, the annoying thing is that no matter what date/Time I am using, I end up with the same result. The format of date/time is month/day/year hour:minute:second.

Does anyone know what's going on? Any help will be appreciated, thanks.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 775

Answers (2)

MathsIsHard
MathsIsHard

Reputation: 277

I have figured it out. You need to specify the format of the date time..

So:

> foo <- '4/1/2017 00:02:23'
> alpha = as.POSIXct(foo, format = '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S')
> beta = as.numeric(alpha)
> beta
[1] 1491001343

Upvotes: 0

Oriol Mirosa
Oriol Mirosa

Reputation: 2826

Notice that you're using the year 4, that is, 1966 years before Unix time started. You should do:

foo <- '2017/4/1 00:02:23'
alpha = as.POSIXct(foo)
alpha

## "2017-04-01 00:02:23 EDT"

beta = as.numeric(alpha)
beta

## 1491019343

Upvotes: 1

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