Converting a yy-mm character into date format

[murls]

Hi, I am trying to covert an csv file with date character into date in r but the date variable still remains a character as below: Any help with this. Thanks.

setwd("D:/R_sch")
Data<- read.csv("D:/R_sch/data.csv", header=T, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
str(Data)
'data.frame': 24 obs. of 2 variables:
Time : chr "Jan-81" "Feb-81" "Mar-81" "Apr-81" ... Rainfall: int 45 67 209 180 131 115 104 184 133 121 ...
as.Date(paste("01-", Data, sep = ""), format = "%d-%b-%y")
[1] NA NA
str(Data)
'data.frame': 24 obs. of 2 variables:
Time : chr "Jan-81" "Feb-81" "Mar-81" "Apr-81" ... Rainfall: int 45 67 209 180 131 115 104 184 133 121 ...
Data
Time Rainfall
1 Jan-81 45
2 Feb-81 67
3 Mar-81 209
4 Apr-81 180
5 May-81 131
6 Jun-81 115
7 Jul-81 104
8 Aug-81 184
9 Sep-81 133
10 Oct-81 121
11 Nov-81 80
12 Dec-81 36
13 Jan-82 43
14 Feb-82 38
15 Mar-82 101
16 Apr-82 193
17 May-82 208
18 Jun-82 79
19 Jul-82 81
20 Aug-82 94
21 Sep-82 109
22 Oct-82 189
23 Nov-82 156
24 Dec-82 35

[Yarnabrina]

I think you're looking for something like this:

Date <- data.frame(stringsAsFactors = FALSE,
                   Time = c("Jan-81", "Feb-81", "Mar-81", "Apr-81", "May-81", "Jun-81",
                            "Jul-81", "Aug-81", "Sep-81", "Oct-81", "Nov-81", "Dec-81",
                            "Jan-82", "Feb-82", "Mar-82", "Apr-82", "May-82", "Jun-82",
                            "Jul-82", "Aug-82", "Sep-82", "Oct-82", "Nov-82", "Dec-82"),
                   Rainfall = c(45, 67, 209, 180, 131, 115, 104, 184, 133, 121, 80, 36,
                                43, 38, 101, 193, 208, 79, 81, 94, 109, 189, 156, 35)        )

Date_mod <- within(data = Date,
                   expr = {
                     Time = as.Date(x = paste0("01-", Time),
                                    format = "%d-%B-%y")
                   })

Date_mod
#>          Time Rainfall
#> 1  1981-01-01       45
#> 2  1981-02-01       67
#> 3  1981-03-01      209
#> 4  1981-04-01      180
#> 5  1981-05-01      131
#> 6  1981-06-01      115
#> 7  1981-07-01      104
#> 8  1981-08-01      184
#> 9  1981-09-01      133
#> 10 1981-10-01      121
#> 11 1981-11-01       80
#> 12 1981-12-01       36
#> 13 1982-01-01       43
#> 14 1982-02-01       38
#> 15 1982-03-01      101
#> 16 1982-04-01      193
#> 17 1982-05-01      208
#> 18 1982-06-01       79
#> 19 1982-07-01       81
#> 20 1982-08-01       94
#> 21 1982-09-01      109
#> 22 1982-10-01      189
#> 23 1982-11-01      156
#> 24 1982-12-01       35

^{Created on 2019-05-08 by the reprex package (v0.2.1)}
Hope this helps.

For future threads, please share your dataset in a copy-paste friendly format.

The dput function is very handy, if you have stored the dataset in some R object.

In case you've your dataset on a spreadsheet, check out the datapasta package. Take a look at the following link:

reprex-ing with {datapasta} 🍝

[murls]

@Yarnabrina

datapasta

Thanks Yanabrina with the help. I ran the code and still it returns Time as a character not date variable as below:

str(Date)
'data.frame': 24 obs. of 2 variables:
Time : chr "Jan-81" "Feb-81" "Mar-81" "Apr-81" ... Rainfall: num 45 67 209 180 131 115 104 184 133 121 ...

[Yarnabrina]

Are you sure? I don't see this problem, as you can find below:

Date <- data.frame(stringsAsFactors = FALSE,
                   Time = c("Jan-81", "Feb-81", "Mar-81", "Apr-81", "May-81", "Jun-81",
                            "Jul-81", "Aug-81", "Sep-81", "Oct-81", "Nov-81", "Dec-81",
                            "Jan-82", "Feb-82", "Mar-82", "Apr-82", "May-82", "Jun-82",
                            "Jul-82", "Aug-82", "Sep-82", "Oct-82", "Nov-82", "Dec-82"),
                   Rainfall = c(45, 67, 209, 180, 131, 115, 104, 184, 133, 121, 80, 36,
                                43, 38, 101, 193, 208, 79, 81, 94, 109, 189, 156, 35)        )

Date_mod <- within(data = Date,
                   expr = {
                     Time = as.Date(x = paste0("01-", Time),
                                    format = "%d-%B-%y")
                   })

str(object = Date_mod)
#> 'data.frame':    24 obs. of  2 variables:
#>  $ Time    : Date, format: "1981-01-01" "1981-02-01" ...
#>  $ Rainfall: num  45 67 209 180 131 115 104 184 133 121 ...

Check whether you're applying str on the old data frame or not.

[murls]

@Yarnabrina

str(object = Date_mod)

Great thanks Yarnabrina, it has worked. Thanks a alot. I will also try out the datapasta package.