[R] as.POSIXct character string is not in a standard unambiguous format

[Jeff Newmiller]

You always need to set your timezone somehow when converting to POSIXt. Technically the method for doing this varies by OS, but on all environments I have worked with you can set the default timezone with something like 

Sys.setenv( TZ="Etc/GMT+5" )

In your example, some timezones supporting daylight savings would regard that time as invalid (clock "jumps forward"). If the default ("system") timezone on a particular server does not match the data you are working with, use the above command to make it easy to work with data from the desired timezone temporarily. Read ?timezones.
-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On April 5, 2017 11:55:34 PM PDT, Sebastien Moretti <sebastien.moretti at unil.ch> wrote:
>Hi Ben
>
>Thanks for your answer
>I have already tried this, as well as
>     x <- as.POSIXct(strptime("2002-02-02 02:02", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"))
>It works! But it does not fix it widely for all tests used during the 
>"make check" step at compile time. Unless I patch all of them.
>
>There is something with localtime but I cannot find what.
>
>On another machine with another Linux OS, and the same environmental 
>variables
>    x <- as.POSIXct("2002-02-02 02:02")
>works fine.
>
>Sébastien
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I can't answer the question about R 3.3.3, but I don't see anything
>in the update notes.
>>
>> http://mirror.its.dal.ca/cran/doc/manuals/r-release/NEWS.html
>>
>> In the meantime, would it skirt your issue if you explicitly stated
>the format?
>>
>> x <- as.POSIXct("2002-02-02 02:02", format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M")
>>
>> Ben
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Apr 5, 2017, at 11:21 AM, Sebastien Moretti
><sebastien.moretti at unil.ch> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> I have lots of issues when I try to install R 3.3.3 during the "make
>check" step.
>>>
>>> Every time a call to as.POSIXct is done in test scripts, I got the
>same error message:
>>> e.g. x <- as.POSIXct("2002-02-02 02:02")
>>> Error in as.POSIXlt.character(x, tz, ...) :
>>>  character string is not in a standard unambiguous format
>>>
>>>
>>> It looks to be linked to localtime but when I compiled R 3.3.2  6
>months ago, the same test scripts were there and succeeded.
>>>
>>>
>>> Is there an environmental variable to use to change the as.POSIXct
>behavior?
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>
>>> --
>>> Sébastien
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
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>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
>> Ben Tupper
>> Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences
>> 60 Bigelow Drive, P.O. Box 380
>> East Boothbay, Maine 04544
>> http://www.bigelow.org
>
>______________________________________________
>R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>PLEASE do read the posting guide
>http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.