Convert Date with special format using R

Question

I have several variables that exist in the following format:

/Date(1353020400000+0100)/

I want to convert this format to ddmmyyyy. I found this solution for the same problem using php, but I don't know anything about php, so I'm unable to convert that solution to what I need, which is a solution that I can use in R.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Answer 1

If the format is milliseconds since the epoch then anytime() or as.POSIXct() can help you:

R> anytime(1353020400000/1000)
[1] "2012-11-15 17:00:00 CST"
R> anytime(1353020400.000)
[1] "2012-11-15 17:00:00 CST"
R> 

anytime() converts to local time, which is Chicago for me. You would have to deal with the UTC offset separately.

Base R can do it too, but you need the dreaded origin:

R> as.POSIXct(1353020400.000, origin="1970-01-01")
[1] "2012-11-15 17:00:00 CST"
R>