CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rdatelubridate
smp201804
smp201804

Reputation: 41

Combining separate date time fields to one date_time field

I used the following R code to create a POSIXct date time field from a separate date and time field both in character format using lubridate and dplyr.

library(dplyr)
library(lubridate)
c_cycle_work <- tibble(
  StartDate = c("1/28/2011", "2/26/2011", "4/2/2011", "4/11/2011"),
  StartTime = c("10:58", "6:02", "6:00", "9:47")
)

c_cycle_work %>%
  mutate(start_dt = paste0(StartDate, StartTime, sep = " ", collapse = NULL)) %>%
  mutate(start_dt = mdy_hms(start_dt))

# 1 1/28/2011     10:58   2020-01-28 11:10:58
# 2 2/26/2011      6:02   2020-02-26 11:06:02
# 3  4/2/2011      6:00   2020-04-02 11:06:00
# 4 4/11/2011      9:47   2020-04-11 11:09:47

The start_dt field I created is in Y m d format even though I used mdy_hms based on the data. Also, all years have been changed to 2020.

Went over this several times, used paste vs. paste0, etc. but still stumped.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 66

Answers (1)

MrFlick
MrFlick

Reputation: 206253

Your problem is the paste0() which doesn't have a sep= argument. So when you paste the date and time you get 1/28/201110:58 and it spilts that into 1/28/20/11/10/58 though it seemed to work differently with my version lubridate_1.6.0. Also you where use "hms" but your times didn't have seconds. This should work with your data

c_cycle_work %>%
  mutate(start_dt = paste(StartDate,  StartTime, sep=" ")) %>% 
  mutate(start_dt = mdy_hm(start_dt))

#   StartDate StartTime            start_dt
#       <chr>     <chr>              <dttm>
# 1 1/28/2011     10:58 2011-01-28 10:58:00
# 2 2/26/2011      6:02 2011-02-26 06:02:00
# 3  4/2/2011      6:00 2011-04-02 06:00:00
# 4 4/11/2011      9:47 2011-04-11 09:47:00

Upvotes: 1

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