as.yearmon(allchem$sampdate) worked for me.
David On 26 June 2015 at 19:44, Rich Shepard <rshep...@appl-ecosys.com> wrote: > 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. ______________________________________________ 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.