[ ... taking the bait regarding the "unnecessary discussion" ... ]
The "Fortune nomination" that Bert sent includes the phrase "...then it is best to tell R ..." What metric is being used to do the ranking to get the "best"? If the metric is related to "providing the most unambiguous information to R" then I agree that providing the structure explicitly is best. However, often what is "best" is to minimize programmer time. With lubridate, I know that providing the clue 'ymd' is enough to have it perform the date conversion correctly. That is minimal effort on my part, which gives it a top ranking from my point of view. Also, to broaden this "unnecessary discussion" I would argue that the lubridate package may even be more "in the spirit of R" than what is being proposed with the explicit structural information. Clearly R is far from being a strongly typed language. If you really want to provide explicit structural information maybe you would be better off with a language such as C++. :-) On Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 2:30 PM Bert Gunter <bgunter.4...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > "But the important point is: > If you know the structure of the data you want to > parse, then it is best to tell R (or any other language) > this structure explicitly. " > > Fortune nomination! > > -- Bert > > > > > > > Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 2:49 AM Enrico Schumann <e...@enricoschumann.net> wrote: > >> >> Quoting Eric Berger <ericjber...@gmail.com>: >> >> > Martin writes: "there's really no reason for going beyond base R" >> > >> > I disagree. Lubridate is a fantastic package. I use it all the time. It >> > makes working with dates really easy, as evidenced by John Kane's >> > suggestion. I strongly recommend learning to work with it. >> > >> > The bottom line: as is often the case, there are many different ways to >> > accomplish a task in R. >> >> I apologise beforehand if this sparks an unnecessary discussion ;-) >> >> But the important point is: >> If you know the structure of the data you want to >> parse, then it is best to tell R (or any other language) >> this structure explicitly. >> >> >> > On Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 10:31 AM Martin Maechler < >> maech...@stat.math.ethz.ch> >> > wrote: >> > >> >> >>>>> John Kane >> >> >>>>> on Tue, 17 Dec 2019 20:28:17 -0500 writes: >> >> >> >> > library(lubridate) >> >> > gs$dat1 <- mdy(gs$date) >> >> >> >> there's really no reason for going beyond base R. >> >> >> >> Using the proper format as per Patrick and Peter's advice >> >> (below) is perfectly clear and actually >> >> more robust (for the next data set etc) >> >> than going via "good guessing" in extra packages. >> >> >> >> > On Tue, 17 Dec 2019 at 18:38, peter dalgaard <pda...@gmail.com> >> >> wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >> ...and switch the order, and use %y for 2-digit years. >> >> >> >> >> >> > On 17 Dec 2019, at 23:57 , Patrick (Malone Quantitative) < >> >> mal...@malonequantitative.com> wrote: >> >> >> > >> >> >> > Try putting / instead of - in your format, to match the data. >> >> >> > >> >> >> > On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 5:52 PM Val <valkr...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Hi All, >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> I wanted to to convert character date mm/dd/yy to >> YYYY-mm-dd >> >> >> >> The sample data and my attempt is shown below >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> gs <-read.table(text="ID date >> >> >> >> A1 09/27/03 >> >> >> >> A2 05/27/16 >> >> >> >> A3 01/25/13 >> >> >> >> A4 09/27/19",header=TRUE,stringsAsFactors=F) >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Desired output >> >> >> >> ID date d1 >> >> >> >> A1 09/27/03 2003-09-27 >> >> >> >> A2 05/27/16 2016-05-27 >> >> >> >> A3 01/25/13 2012-04-25 >> >> >> >> A4 09/27/19 2019-09-27 >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> I used this >> >> >> >> gs$d1 = as.Date(as.character(gs$date), format = "%Y-%m-%d") >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> but I got NA's. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> How do I get my desired result? >> >> >> >> Thank you. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> >> >> Peter Dalgaard, Professor, >> >> >> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School >> >> >> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark >> >> >> Phone: (+45)38153501 >> >> >> Office: A 4.23 >> >> >> Email: pd....@cbs.dk Priv: pda...@gmail.com >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > -- >> >> > John Kane >> >> > Kingston ON Canada >> >> >> >> -- >> Enrico Schumann >> Lucerne, Switzerland >> http://enricoschumann.net >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-help@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. >> >> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@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.
