[R] Strptime

[Creighton, Sean]

Hi

This code should explain what I'm trying to do

> strptime("30-Jan-08", "%d-%b-%y")
[1] "2008-01-30"
> 
> format(strptime("30-Jan-08", "%d-%b-%y") , "%b-%y")
[1] "Jan-08"
> 
> strptime(format(strptime("30-Jan-08", "%d-%b-%y") , "%b-%y") ,
"%b-%y") 
[1] NA


I have a string of the form "Jan-08" but I can't seem to get strptime to
recognise it. The format function can take the date object and using the
given flags "%b-%y" create a string. It can't, however, seem to go back
the other way, i.e. as in the line below:

> strptime(format(strptime("30-Jan-08", "%d-%b-%y") , "%d-%m-%Y"),
"%d-%m-%Y")
[1] "2008-01-30"

Any tips?

Thanks
Sean






> R.Version()
$platform
[1] "i386-pc-mingw32"

$arch
[1] "i386"

$os
[1] "mingw32"

$system
[1] "i386, mingw32"

$status
[1] ""

$major
[1] "2"

$minor
[1] "6.0"

$year
[1] "2007"

$month
[1] "10"

$day
[1] "03"

$`svn rev`
[1] "43063"

$language
[1] "R"

$version.string
[1] "R version 2.6.0 (2007-10-03)"