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Undesired result

5 messages · John Kane, Duncan Murdoch, Val

Val
#
HI All,

I am reading a data file which has different date formats. I wanted to
standardize to one format and used  a library anytime but got
undesired results as shown below. It gave me year 2093 instead of 1993


library(anytime)
DFX<-read.table(text="name ddate
  A  19-10-02
  D  11/19/2006
  F  9/9/2011
  G1  12/29/2010
  AA   10/18/93 ",header=TRUE)
    getFormats()
    addFormats(c("%d-%m-%y"))
    addFormats(c("%m-%d-%y"))
    addFormats(c("%Y/%d/%m"))
    addFormats(c("%m/%d/%y"))

DFX$anew=anydate(DFX$ddate)

Output
 name      ddate       anew
1    A   19-10-02 2002-10-19
2    D 11/19/2006 2020-11-19
3    F   9/9/2011 2011-09-09
4   G1 12/29/2010 2020-12-29
5   AA   10/18/93 2093-10-18

The problem is in the last row. It should be  1993-10-18 instead of 2093-10-18

How do I correct this?
Thank you.
#
You have 4 " addFormats" commands. Maybe add one more?
On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 at 10:00, Val <valkremk at gmail.com> wrote:

            

  
    
#
On 17/02/2021 9:50 a.m., Val wrote:
This looks a little tricky.  The basic idea is that the %y format has to 
guess at the century, but the guess depends on things specific to your 
system.  So what would be nice is to say "two digit dates should be 
assumed to fall between 1922 and 2021", but there's no way to do that 
directly.

What you could do is recognize when you have a two digit year, and then 
force the result into the range you want.  Here's a function that does 
that, but it's not really tested much at all, so be careful if you use 
it.  (One thing:  I recommend the 'useR = TRUE' option to anydate(); it 
worked better in my tests than the default.)

adjustCentury <- function(inputString,
                           outputDate = anydate(inputString, useR = TRUE),
                           start = "1922-01-01") {

   start <- as.Date(start)

   twodigityear <- !grepl("[[:digit:]]{4}", inputString)

   while (length(bad <- which(twodigityear & outputDate < start))) {
     for (i in bad) {
       longdate <- as.POSIXlt(outputDate[i])
       longdate$year <- longdate$year + 100
       outputDate[i] <- as.Date(longdate)
     }
   }
   longdate <- as.POSIXlt(start)
   longdate$year <- longdate$year + 100
   finish <- as.Date(longdate)

   while (length(bad <- which(twodigityear & outputDate >= finish))) {
     for (i in bad) {
       longdate <- as.POSIXlt(outputDate[i])
       longdate$year <- longdate$year - 100
       outputDate[i] <- as.Date(longdate)
     }
   }
   outputDate
}

library(anytime)
DFX<-read.table(text="name ddate
   A  19-10-02
   D  11/19/2006
   F  9/9/2011
   G1  12/29/2010
   AA   10/18/93
   BB   10/18/1893
   CC   10/18/2093",header=TRUE)

addFormats(c("%d-%m-%y"))
addFormats(c("%m-%d-%y"))
addFormats(c("%Y/%d/%m"))
addFormats(c("%m/%d/%y"))

DFX$anew=adjustCentury(DFX$ddate, start = "1921-01-01")
DFX
#>   name      ddate       anew
#> 1    A   19-10-02 2019-10-02
#> 2    D 11/19/2006 2006-11-19
#> 3    F   9/9/2011 2011-09-09
#> 4   G1 12/29/2010 2010-12-29
#> 5   AA   10/18/93 1993-10-18
#> 6   BB 10/18/1893 1893-10-18
#> 7   CC 10/18/2093 2093-10-18
#
Just a quick note:  you can simplify my function and speed it up quite a 
bit if speed is an issue.  I had forgotten that the POSIXlt type could 
act like a vector; using that you don't need those inner for loops, and 
with a little calculation you can also do without the outer while loops.

Duncan Murdoch
On 17/02/2021 12:50 p.m., Duncan Murdoch wrote:
Val
#
Very helpful and thank you so much!


On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 12:50 PM Duncan Murdoch
<murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote: