Split date-time column into Date and time variables

Question

I have a 'date-time column 'Start' in the format "Y-m-d H:M:S". I want to split this column into a "Date" and a "time" column.

I have tried the following:

df$Date <- sapply(strsplit(as.character(df$Start), " "), "[", 1) df$Time <- sapply(strsplit(as.character(df$Start), " "), "[", 2) 

This works, however, if I use the function str(df)

# 'data.frame':   18363 obs. of  19 variables:<br> #  $ Start    : Factor w/ 67 levels "2013-09-01 08:07:41.000",..: 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ... # [snip] 

So now I only need to know how to convert the time and date from factor to 'time' and 'date'.

Answer 1

How about

df$Date <- as.Date(df$Start)  df$Time <- format(df$Start,"%H:%M:%S") 

Answer 2

df$Date <- as.Date(df$Start) # already got this one from the answers above df$Time <- format(as.POSIXct(df$Start), format = "%H:%M:%S")  

Use as.Date to convert 'Start' to a variables of class Date. For the time variable, we first convert 'Start' to POSIXct. Then use format to extract the time component as a string.