Can I apply a function over a vector using base tryCatch?

Question

I\'m trying to parse dates (using lubridate functions) from a vector which has mixed date formats.

departureDate <- c(\"Aug 17, 2020 12:00:00 AM\", \"Nov          


        

Answer 1

We can use lubridate::parse_date_time which can take multiple formats.

lubridate::parse_date_time(departureDate, c('%b %d, %Y %I:%M:%S %p', '%d/%m/%Y'))

#[1] "2020-08-17 UTC" "2019-11-19 UTC" "2020-12-21 UTC" "2020-12-24 UTC"
#[5] "2020-12-24 UTC" "2020-04-19 UTC" "2019-06-28 UTC" "2019-08-16 UTC"
#[9] "2019-02-04 UTC" "2019-04-10 UTC" "2019-07-28 UTC" "2019-07-26 UTC"
#[13] "2020-06-22 UTC" "2020-04-05 UTC" "2021-05-01 UTC"

Since in departureDate month name is in English, you need the locale to be English as well.

Refer How to change the locale of R? if you have non-English locale.