Convert UNIX epoch to Date object

Question

I'm plotting and performing calculations on uniformly distributed time series. The timestamps are currently stored as integers representing the number of seconds since the UNIX epoch (e.g. `1352068320`), but `Date` objects seem more appropriate for plotting. How can I do the conversion? I've read `?Date`, `?as.Date` and `??epoch`, but seem to have missed that information.

Accepted Answer

Go via `POSIXct` and you want to set a `TZ` there -- here you see my (Chicago) default:

```
R> val <- 1352068320
R> as.POSIXct(val, origin="1970-01-01")
[1] "2012-11-04 22:32:00 CST"
R> as.Date(as.POSIXct(val, origin="1970-01-01"))
[1] "2012-11-05" 
R> 
```

Edit: A few years later, we can now use the anytime package:

```
R> library(anytime)
R> anytime(1352068320)
[1] "2012-11-04 16:32:00 CST"
R> anydate(1352068320)
[1] "2012-11-04"
R> 
```

Note how all this works without any format or origin arguments.

Convert UNIX epoch to Date object

Solution

Problem