as.date funtion

[cesarcruz01]

Hi, I'm new in R, I'm trying to convert this string "Wed, Jan 6, 2016" to 2016-01-06 I used this sentence
x <- "Wed, Jan 6, 2016'
as.Date(x, format = "%Y-%m-%d")

but doesn't works, I appreciate your help

[Rsky]

Congratulations on your first post.

You're mistaken.

The format is what tells the function how to read the input characters.
Let's tell it the pattern of the delimiter.

The days of the week are in the way, so it is best to remove them.

x <- "1-6-2016"
as.Date(x, format = "%m-%d-%Y")
x <- "1_6_2016"
as.Date(x, format = "%m_%d_%Y")
x <- "6_2016-1"
as.Date(x, format = "%d_%Y-%m")
x <- "1/6/2016"
as.Date(x, format = "%m/%d/%Y")

I will teach you the dictionary rdocumentation.

as.Date function - RDocumentation

Before asking questions, you should look for instructions and try running the sample code.

lubridate is a great package that further extends the recognition of the year and month.

library(lubridate)
x <- "1-6-2016"
mdy(x)
x <- "2016,Jan 6"
ymd(x)

Make Dealing with Dates a Little Easier

Please continue to enjoy R.
If you have trouble with a function, use ? before the function.

?as.Date

[cesarcruz01]

Thank you for your help

[DavoWW]

Hi @cesarcruz01,
You can convert your date string with the day-of-the-week present as follows:

# help("strptime")  # Gives details about elements of the 'format=' string

x <- "Wed, Jan 6, 2016"
as.Date(x, format = "%A, %B %d, %Y")
#> [1] "2016-01-06"

# Confirm that the given date is a Wednesday
library(lubridate)
#> 
#> Attaching package: 'lubridate'
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
#> 
#>     date, intersect, setdiff, union
wday(as.Date(x, format = "%A, %B %d, %Y"), label=TRUE, abbr=FALSE)
#> [1] Wednesday
#> 7 Levels: Sunday < Monday < Tuesday < Wednesday < Thursday < ... < Saturday

^{Created on 2021-06-15 by the reprex package (v2.0.0)}