Convert to date from unconventional format in R

Question

I have dates formatted as character strings following the format of this example:

"Wednesday 18 May 2016"

Is there a way to convert it into date directly, maybe with as.Date(mystring,someformat) ?

`as.Date("Wednesday 18 May 2016", "%A %d %B %Y")` – mtoto Mar 20 '16 at 11:43 — mtoto, Mar 20 '16 at 11:43

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 20 '16 at 11:43

2

We can remove the Wednesday followed by space with sub and convert to 'Date'

as.Date(sub("^\\S+\\s+", "", str1), "%d %b %Y")
#[1] "2016-05-18"

If we are using lubridate, just use dmy

library(lubridate)
dmy(str1)
#[1] "2016-05-18 UTC"

str1 <- "Wednesday 18 May 2016"

answered Mar 20 '16 at 11:43

akrun

1

Thanks, mtoto proposed a simpler answer in the comments, but i'm happy to learn about lubridate! – moodymudskipper Mar 20 '16 at 11:58

1 Answers1