[R] Help with read.csv.sql()

[H]

I have created a dataframe with columns that are characters, integers and numeric and with column names assigned by me. I am using read.csv.sql() to read portions of a number of large csv files into this dataframe, each csv file having a header row with columb names.

The problem I am having is that the csv files have header rows with column names that are slightly different from the column names I have assigned in the dataframe and it seems that when I read the csv data into the dataframe, the column names from the csv file replace the column names I chose when creating the dataframe.

I have been unable to figure out if it is possible to assign column names of my choosing in the read.csv.sql() function? I have tried various variations but none seem to work. I tried colClasses = c(....) but that did not work, I tried field.types = c(...) but could not get that to work either.

It seems that the above should be feasible but I am missing something? Does anyone know?

A secondary issue is that the csv files have a column with a date in mm/dd/yyyy format that I would like to make into a Date type column in my dataframe. Again, I have been unable to find a way - if at all possible - to force a conversion into a Date format when importing into the dataframe. The best I have so far is to import is a character column and then use as.Date() to later force the conversion of the dataframe column.

Is it possible to do this when importing using read.csv.sql()?