How to handle date in R

How to handle date in R

Date data type is very important for all programming languages. To handle the date in a proper way, we need to apply some formatting logic.

This is the case for R programming language as well. This post explains you, how we can handle the Date data in R. There are different functions available in R to handle date.

To get the today’s date, use Sys.Date()

Sys.Date()

> Sys.Date()

[1] “2018-05-22”

 

To get date and time, use date()

> date()[1] “Tue May 22 15:29:18 2018”

 

Check the below list of symbols to play with date and time format.

Symbol	Meaning	Example
%d	day as a number (0-31)	01-31
%a %A	abbreviated weekday unabbreviated weekday	Mon Monday
%m	month (00-12)	00-12
%b %B	abbreviated month unabbreviated month	Jan January
%y %Y	2-digit year 4-digit year	07 2007

 

> today <- Sys.Date()> format(today, format=”%B %d %Y”)[1] “May 22 2018”

 

Date Conversion

In a real-time scenario, we will not get date as date data type. Always, we need to convert to proper date data type. To convert to date data type, we need to use as.Date() function.

Syntax

as.Date(x, “format”)

x – Field or column

format – use the above symbols to frame the proper format.

 

DateVec<- c(“01/05/2018”, “08/16/2018”)

DateVec

[1] “01/05/2018” “08/16/2018”

summary(DateVec)

Length     Class        Mode

2            character   character

dates <- as.Date(DateVec, “%m/%d/%Y”)

dates

[1] “2018-01-05” “2018-08-16”

summary(dates)

Min.      1st Qu.       Median         Mean      3rd Qu.         Max.

“2018-01-05” “2018-03-01” “2018-04-26” “2018-04-26” “2018-06-21” “2018-08-16”