Convert list/vector of strings with date format into posix date class with R

r, statistics, timestamp

Solution

`strptime` is vectorized:

a <- c("2009.01.01 12:20:10", "2009.01.01 04:12:14")
> out <- strptime(a, "%Y.%m.%d %H:%M:%S")
> str(out)
 POSIXlt[1:2], format: "2009-01-01 12:20:10" "2009-01-01 04:12:14"

Problem

I have a list of strings that is in our date format and I want to convert it into a list of posix dates that I can manipulate with R, how can I do that? This is what I have but I end up with a list of lists: ``` a <- c("2009.01.01 00:00:00", "2009.01.01 00:00:00") z <- lapply(a,function(x){strptime(x, "%Y.%m.%d %H:%M:%S")}) > z <- lapply(a,function(x){strptime(x, "%Y.%m.%d %H:%M:%S")}) > summary(z) Length Class Mode [1,] 1 POSIXlt list [2,] 1 POSIXlt list ```

Original source