[R] question about formatting Dates

[Erin Hodgess]

Dear R People:

I have dates as factors in the following:

> poudel.df$DATE
[1] 1/2/2011  1/4/2011  1/4/2011  1/4/2011  1/6/2011  1/7/2011  1/8/2011
[8] 1/9/2011  1/10/2011
Levels: 1/10/2011 1/2/2011 1/4/2011 1/6/2011 1/7/2011 1/8/2011 1/9/2011
>

I want them to be "regular" dates which can be sorted, etc.

But when I did this:

> as.character(poudel.df$DATE)
[1] "1/2/2011"  "1/4/2011"  "1/4/2011"  "1/4/2011"  "1/6/2011"  "1/7/2011"
[7] "1/8/2011"  "1/9/2011"  "1/10/2011"

and
> as.Date(as.character(poudel.df$DATE),"%m/%d/$Y")
[1] NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA

because the dates do not have leading zeros.

There are approximately 30 years of nearly daily data in the entire set.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Sincerely,
Erin


-- 
Erin Hodgess
Associate Professor
Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences
University of Houston - Downtown
mailto: erinm.hodgess at gmail.com