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% File src/library/base/man/as.Date.Rd
% Part of the R package, https://www.R-project.org
% Copyright 1995-2017 R Core Team
% Distributed under GPL 2 or later
\name{as.Date}
\alias{format.Date}
\alias{as.character.Date}
\alias{as.Date}
\alias{as.Date.character}
\alias{as.Date.default}
\alias{as.Date.factor}
\alias{as.Date.POSIXct}
\alias{as.Date.POSIXlt}
\alias{as.Date.date}
\alias{as.Date.dates}
\alias{as.Date.numeric}
\title{Date Conversion Functions to and from Character}
\description{
Functions to convert between character representations and objects of
class \code{"Date"} representing calendar dates.
}
\usage{
as.Date(x, \dots)
\method{as.Date}{character}(x, format, tryFormats = c("\%Y-\%m-\%d", "\%Y/\%m/\%d"),
optional = FALSE, \dots)
\method{as.Date}{numeric}(x, origin, \dots)
\method{as.Date}{POSIXct}(x, tz = "UTC", \dots)
\method{format}{Date}(x, \dots)
\method{as.character}{Date}(x, \dots)
}
\arguments{
\item{x}{an object to be converted.}
\item{format}{\code{\link{character}} string. If not specified, it will try
\code{tryFormats} one by one on the first non-\code{NA} element, and
give an error if none works. Otherwise, the processing is via
\code{\link{strptime}}.}
\item{tryFormats}{\code{\link{character}} vector of \code{format}
strings to try if \code{format} is not specified.}
\item{optional}{\code{\link{logical}} indicating to return \code{NA}
(instead of signalling an error) if the format guessing does not succeed.}
\item{origin}{a \code{Date} object, or something which can be coerced by
\code{as.Date(origin, \dots)} to such an object.}
\item{tz}{a time zone name.}
\item{\dots}{further arguments to be passed from or to other methods,
including \code{format} for \code{as.character} and \code{as.Date}
methods.}
}
\details{
The usual vector re-cycling rules are applied to \code{x} and
\code{format} so the answer will be of length that of the longer of the
vectors.
Locale-specific conversions to and from character strings are used
where appropriate and available. This affects the names of the days
and months.
The \code{as.Date} methods accept character strings, factors, logical
\code{NA} and objects of classes \code{"\link{POSIXlt}"} and
\code{"\link{POSIXct}"}. (The last is converted to days by ignoring
the time after midnight in the representation of the time in specified
time zone, default UTC.) Also objects of class \code{"date"} (from
package \pkg{\link[date:as.date]{date}}) and \code{"dates"} (from
package \pkg{\link[chron]{chron}}). Character strings are processed
as far as necessary for the format specified: any trailing characters
are ignored.
\code{as.Date} will accept numeric data (the number of days since an
epoch), but \emph{only} if \code{origin} is supplied.
The \code{format} and \code{as.character} methods ignore any
fractional part of the date.
}
\value{
The \code{format} and \code{as.character} methods return a character vector
representing the date. \code{NA} dates are returned as \code{NA_character_}.
The \code{as.Date} methods return an object of class \code{"\link{Date}"}.
}
\note{
The default formats follow the rules of the ISO 8601 international
standard which expresses a day as \code{"2001-02-03"}.
If the date string does not specify the date completely, the returned
answer may be system-specific. The most common behaviour is to assume
that a missing year, month or day is the current one. If it specifies
a date incorrectly, reliable implementations will give an error and
the date is reported as \code{NA}. Unfortunately some common
implementations (such as \samp{glibc}) are unreliable and guess at the
intended meaning.
Years before 1CE (aka 1AD) will probably not be handled correctly.
}
\section{Conversion from other Systems}{
Most systems record dates internally as the number of days since some
origin, but this is fraught with problems, including
\itemize{
\item Is the origin day 0 or day 1? As the \sQuote{Examples} show,
Excel manages to use both choices for its two date systems.
\item If the origin is far enough back, the designers may show their
ignorance of calendar systems. For example, Excel's designer
thought 1900 was a leap year (claiming to copy the error from
earlier DOS spreadsheets), and Matlab's designer chose the
non-existent date of \sQuote{January 0, 0000} (there is no such day),
not specifying the calendar. (There is such a year in the
\sQuote{Gregorian} calendar as used in ISO 8601:2004, but that does say
that it is only to be used for years before 1582 with the agreement
of the parties in information exchange.)
}
The only safe procedure is to check the other systems values for known
dates: reports on the Internet (including R-help) are more often wrong
than right.
}
\references{
International Organization for Standardization (2004, 1988, 1997,
\dots)
\emph{ISO 8601. Data elements and interchange formats --
Information interchange -- Representation of dates and times.}
For links to versions available on-line see (at the time of writing)
\url{http://www.qsl.net/g1smd/isopdf.htm}.
}
\seealso{
\link{Date} for details of the date class;
\code{\link{locales}} to query or set a locale.
Your system's help pages on \code{strftime} and \code{strptime} to see
how to specify their formats. Windows users will find no help page
for \code{strptime}: code based on \samp{glibc} is used (with
corrections), so all the format specifiers described here are
supported, but with no alternative number representation nor era
available in any locale.
}
\examples{\donttest{
## locale-specific version of the date
format(Sys.Date(), "\%a \%b \%d")}
## read in date info in format 'ddmmmyyyy'
## This will give NA(s) in some locales; setting the C locale
## as in the commented lines will overcome this on most systems.
## lct <- Sys.getlocale("LC_TIME"); Sys.setlocale("LC_TIME", "C")
x <- c("1jan1960", "2jan1960", "31mar1960", "30jul1960")
z <- as.Date(x, "\%d\%b\%Y")
## Sys.setlocale("LC_TIME", lct)
z
## read in date/time info in format 'm/d/y'
dates <- c("02/27/92", "02/27/92", "01/14/92", "02/28/92", "02/01/92")
as.Date(dates, "\%m/\%d/\%y")
## date given as number of days since 1900-01-01 (a date in 1989)
as.Date(32768, origin = "1900-01-01")
## Excel is said to use 1900-01-01 as day 1 (Windows default) or
## 1904-01-01 as day 0 (Mac default), but this is complicated by Excel
## incorrectly treating 1900 as a leap year.
## So for dates (post-1901) from Windows Excel
as.Date(35981, origin = "1899-12-30") # 1998-07-05
## and Mac Excel
as.Date(34519, origin = "1904-01-01") # 1998-07-05
## (these values come from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214330)
## Experiment shows that Matlab's origin is 719529 days before ours,
## (it takes the non-existent 0000-01-01 as day 1)
## so Matlab day 734373 can be imported as
as.Date(734373, origin = "1970-01-01") - 719529 # 2010-08-23
## (value from
## http://www.mathworks.de/de/help/matlab/matlab_prog/represent-date-and-times-in-MATLAB.html)
## Time zone effect
z <- ISOdate(2010, 04, 13, c(0,12)) # midnight and midday UTC
as.Date(z) # in UTC
\donttest{## these time zone names are common
as.Date(z, tz = "NZ")
as.Date(z, tz = "HST") # Hawaii}
}
\keyword{utilities}
\keyword{chron}