Data file 'example.dat' has this format: stream,sampdate,param,quant B,1992-03,Cl,4 B,1992-03,SO4,33 B,1992-03,pH,8.43 B,1992-04,Cl,4 B,1992-04,SO4,32 B,1992-04,pH,8.46 B,1992-05,Cl,4 B,1992-05,SO4,31 B,1992-05,pH,8.43
It's read into R with allchem <- read.table('example.dat', stringsAsFactors=F, header=T, sep=',') and yields this structure: str(allchem) 'data.frame': 2226 obs. of 4 variables: $ stream : chr "B" "B" "B" "B" ... $ sampdate: chr "1992-03" "1992-03" "1992-03" "1992-04" ... $ param : chr "Cl" "SO4" "pH" "Cl" ... $ quant : num 4 33 8.43 4 32 8.46 4 31 8.43 6 ... Because the date field contains year and month but no day, as.Date() does not work. ?as.Date displays the help file for yearmon in package 'zoo.' Reading this lead me to try: allchem$sampdate <- as.yearmon(format(%Y-%m))allchem$sampdate which produces the error, Error: unexpected SPECIAL in "allchem$sampdate <- as.yearmon(format(%Y-%". I do not see the proper syntax to change the sampdate char string to year-month dates. Advice appreciated. Rich ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.