How to change the data type of my row names from character to integer?

[ameliedc]

I can't change the data type of the names of my rows from character to integer. I tried following code:

rownames(transposed_data)=as.integer(rownames(transposed_data))

All the values are numbers and I don't get an error notification, but the data type remains unchanged.

[nirgrahamuk]

row names are names so they are always character.
I recommend you dont use them anyway as they tend to confuse more than you would benefit from them, the benefits could be seen with lower cost from making them a regular column containing the same information.

[ameliedc]

The row names indicate dates. I could transpose my data so that they become the names of the columns. Can I then change the class to integer?
The reason I need to do this is because I'm working with a financial time series and all the dates became numbers (the number of days since 1899-30-12). I want to change them back to dates but in order to do so, I need them to be integers and not characters.