date objects in month day format

Question

I was wondering if there is a way for R to turn this format into any date object. The format is 'month [space] day'. For example: Jan 1 or Jul 29 or Jul 30. I just want those examples to be read as a date object so I can manipulate them.

Answer 1

Yes, use as.Date, but you also have to specify a year:

x <- c("Jan 1", "Jul 29", "Jul 30")

as.Date(paste("2012", x), format="%Y %b %d")
[1] "2012-01-01" "2012-07-29" "2012-07-30"

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See ?as.Date for more help on Date objects, and ?strptime for help on the formatting codes.