convert string to datetime R

Question

I want to convert a string to datetime in R.

For example, I have '20110101000' as the string. I want to convert this to datetime '2011-01-01 00:00.' Also I would like '2011-01-01 01:00' minus '2011-01-01 00:00' = 1 hr. Eventually, I would like to have a condition where if the time difference between two date times isn't equal to 1 hour

if(diff != 1){do something}

Currently, I have used as.Date which works fine for converting string to dates, but doesn't have any options for time. Also structure with POSIXt gives me a strange result.

structure('201101010000',class=c('POSIXt', 'POSIXct'))
[1] "8342-08-21 19:40:00 EDT"

I have 100,000 + files that have to run this operation. Please let me know of the most efficient solution.

Answer 1

You can use the Base R package.

convert the dates to POSIXcts. Look at code below.

    dt1 <- c("201101010100")
    dt2 <- c("201101010200")

    date1 <- as.POSIXct(dt1, format="%Y%m%d%H%M")
    date2 <- as.POSIXct(dt2, format="%Y%m%d%H%M")

    diff <- difftime(date2, date1, units="hours")
    if(diff != 1) {
     print("do something")
    }