Wrongfully recognition with %m/%d/%y

[Wistarr]

I want to convert strings that are formatted as such 01/15/17 (January 15th 2017). But when I add the %m/%d/%y formats, it recognises random strings as date.

library(anytime)
string <- "121013_3_1"
anytime(string) #NA

addFormats(c("%m/%d/%y"))
anytime(string) #1999-12-01 UTC

Interestingly, it seems like many characters are actually ignored.

vector <- c("121013_3_1", "1210111", "12z01z_3_1", "121013_3$1")
all(anytime(vector) == "1999-12-01 UTC") #TRUE

Is there another more specific format I could use?

[eddelbuettel]

I am not sure what you are expecting. anytime() and anydate() test a fairly large, known, and documented set of formats as a convenience.

If you have an obscure new format, use as.Date() with the format string. If need, loop over several inputs with several formats.

As for %y : I recommend against, just how I recommend against non-iso8661 formats (but living where I do I grudgingly accept the m-d-y variant).

I plan to close this unless you manage to convince that there is shortcoming in anytime() vis a vis its documented behaviour. So far we mostly have you wishing for something we never said we'd do.

[eddelbuettel]

Also

R> library(anytime)
R> anytime::addFormats("%m/%d/%y %H:%M:%S")
R> anytime("03/04/05 06:07:08")
[1] "2005-03-04 06:07:08 CST"
R> 

So I am not sure what the question is here.

[Wistarr]

I think %m/%d/%y %H:%M:%S was the answer I was looking for. It make the recognition much more precise and resolve the issue I stated.

[eddelbuettel]

Yes, while writing it I realized you may "simply" have confused the formats between anytime() (needs hour/min/sec) and anydate() (does not). All good then.

And yes, executive decision at my end to prefer four-digit years so the default formats are all with %Y.