fix_dates: Clean up messy date columns

In VallejosGroup/rvallejo: Shared analysis code and tools for the Vallejos Group

Description

Cleans up a dataframe object which has date columns entered via a free-text box (possibly by different users) and are therefore in a non-standardised format. Supports numerous seperators including /,- or space. Supports all-numeric, abbreviation or long-hand month notation. Where day of the month has not been supplied, the first day of the month is imputed. When day, month and year is given either DMY or YMD is assumed; the US system of MDY is not supported.

Usage

fix_dates(df, col.names)

Arguments

df	A dataframe object with messy date column(s)
col.names	Character vector of names of columns of messy date data

Value

A dataframe object. Selected columns are of type Date

Examples

bad.dates <- data.frame(id = seq(5),
                        some.dates = c("02/05/92",
                                       "01-04-2020",
                                       "1996/05/01",
                                       "2020-05-01",
                                       "02-04-96"),
                        some.more.dates = c("2015",
                                            "02/05/00",
                                            "05/1990",
                                            "2012-08",
                                            "jan 2020"))
fixed.df <- fix_dates(bad.dates, c("some.dates", "some.more.dates"))

VallejosGroup/rvallejo documentation built on Jan. 29, 2021, 2:41 p.m.