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Try conversion to date representation

Source: R/try_date.R
try_date.Rd

Try conversion of a date serial value to the respective date representation. Return the date object or its character representation if conversion succeeds, the original value if it does not. Allows to only convert dates above and/or below a min/max date.

Usage

try_date(
  x,
  origin = c("excel", "excel_off1", "excel_1904", "unix"),
  min_date = NULL,
  max_date = NULL,
  return_character = TRUE
)

Arguments

x

A single atomic value, i.e. one string, number or element.

origin

The origin of the serial value, i.e. the day 0. See description for list of supported options.

min_date

Set a minimum date for conversion. Use format YYYY-MM-DD.

max_date

Set a maximum date for conversion. Use format YYYY-MM-DD.

return_character

Return the character representation of the converted object, rather than the date object. Does not affect return of unsuccessful conversions. Returns in Format YYYY-MM-DD.

Value

Potentially the date representation of x, x otherwise.

Details

Origin: Correct conversion relies on the correct origin for the serial value. Available options are:

  • excel: Set the origin to 1899-12-30. This is the default date origin in Excel for Windows and for Mac since 2011.

  • excel_off1: Set the origin to 1899-12-31. This might be useful to tackle Excel's 1900 Leap Year Bug for dates before before the 28th of February 1900.

  • excel_1904: Set the origin to 1904-01-01. This is the date origin for the Excel 1904 date system, which was default in early versions of Excel for Mac.

  • unix: Set the origin to 1970-01-01. This is Epoch time used by unix-based systems.

For more details about the date origin used in Excel, see Microsoft.

See also

try_dates()

Examples


# Excel has converted a date to a serial number, e.g. 40729

# convert to date representation
try_date("40729")
#> [1] "2011-07-05"
try_date(40729)
#> [1] "2011-07-05"

# no conversion for incompatible data types
try_date("hello")
#> [1] "hello"
try_date("1900-01-01")
#> [1] "1900-01-01"

# set min or max date to only convert values in range
try_date("40729", min_date = "2011-07-06")
#> [1] "40729"