Hello all, I am manipulating a large database with 70,000 records. "strptime" generates a date variable but R treats some of the values as NA. I attach a simple example below.
I have spent hours on this problem. Any hint would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks, Edwin Sun # =======start of sample code ============= > x <- c("2005-04-02 19:03:00", "2005-04-03 02:00:00", "2005-04-03 > 14:25:00") > y <- strptime(x, format="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S") > x; y; str(x); str(y) [1] "2005-04-02 19:03:00" "2005-04-03 02:00:00" "2005-04-03 14:25:00" [1] "2005-04-02 19:03:00" "2005-04-03 02:00:00" "2005-04-03 14:25:00" chr [1:3] "2005-04-02 19:03:00" "2005-04-03 02:00:00" ... POSIXlt[1:3], format: "2005-04-02 19:03:00" "2005-04-03 02:00:00" ... > is.na(y) [1] FALSE TRUE FALSE > difftime(y[2], y[1], units="mins") Time difference of NA mins > difftime(y[3], y[1], units="mins") Time difference of 1102 mins > sessionInfo() R version 2.13.1 (2011-07-08) Platform: i386-pc-mingw32/i386 (32-bit) locale: [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252 [2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252 [3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252 [4] LC_NUMERIC=C [5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252 attached base packages: [1] grDevices datasets splines graphics stats tcltk utils [8] methods base other attached packages: [1] svSocket_0.9-51 TinnR_1.0.3 R2HTML_2.2 Hmisc_3.8-3 [5] survival_2.36-9 loaded via a namespace (and not attached): [1] cluster_1.14.0 grid_2.13.1 lattice_0.19-30 svMisc_0.9-61 [5] tools_2.13.1 # My computer is 64 bit / Microsoft Window 7; R 2.13.1 (32 bit) # ======= end of sample code ==================== -- View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/strange-problem-with-strptime-and-date-variable-tp3677178p3677178.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list 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.