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

[Sebastien Moretti]

This is far from portable programming but as R looks to search for 
/etc/localtime it is simpler for me do like that.
I will not patch R source code to make "make check" step works.

Then for my own code, I will use
     x <- as.POSIXct(strptime("2002-02-02 02:02", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"))
or
     Sys.setenv( TZ="Etc/GMT+5" )

instead of ambiguous
     x <- as.POSIXct("2002-02-02 02:02")

Sébastien


> I cannot imagine a less desirable solution.  This is the opposite of portable programming.
-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On April 6, 2017 5:29:08 AM PDT, Sebastien Moretti 
<sebastien.moretti at unil.ch> wrote:
 > I have just found the solution.
 >
 > We have a custom Linux distribution that allows us to have several R (+
 >
 > glibc and others) versions in parallel for tools related to our job
 > domain.
 >
 > We have another etc/ folder for those tools and R looks for the
 > localtime file there, not in /etc/.
 > So linking /etc/localtime to our etc/ folder makes R happy and
 >     x <- as.POSIXct("2002-02-02 02:02")
 > works fine!
 >
 > Sébastien
 >
 >> 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