converting datetime string to POSIXct date/time format in R

Question

Consider a string in the format

test <- \"YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00.000-08:00\"

My goal is to convert those strings to POSIXct f

Answer 1

You need to specify a format for your conversion. Take a read of ?strptime to see all of the options for date formats.

#YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00.000-08:00
test <- "2013-12-25T04:32:16.500-08:00"
z <- as.POSIXct(test,format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%OS")
op <- options(digits.secs = 3)
z
#[1] "2013-12-25 04:32:16.5 EST"