How to convert the proper class in R

Question

I tried to convert the class from character to date it showing an error Error in charToDate(x) : character string is not in a standard unambiguous format

dput(my_data$exit_date)
c("0000-00-00", "2019-08-25", "2019-12-31", "2020-04-02", "2020-09-15", 
"0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "2019-12-08", "0000-00-00", 
"2020-11-30", "2020-09-01", "0000-00-00", "2020-02-15", "2020-07-24", 
"2021-03-22", "2020-07-03", "2020-03-26", "2020-02-24", "2019-05-15", 
"0000-00-00", "2020-01-28", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", 
"0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "2021-03-22", "2021-03-25", 
"2021-03-22", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", 
"0000-00-00")

my_data$exit_date <- as.Date(my_data$exit_date)

Answer 1

You need to specify the format of the date. Error is probably because it can't guess from the initial date of 0s.

d1 <- c("0000-00-00", "2019-08-25", "2019-12-31", "2020-04-02", "2020-09-15", 
  "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "2019-12-08", "0000-00-00", 
  "2020-11-30", "2020-09-01", "0000-00-00", "2020-02-15", "2020-07-24", 
  "2021-03-22", "2020-07-03", "2020-03-26", "2020-02-24", "2019-05-15", 
  "0000-00-00", "2020-01-28", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", 
  "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "2021-03-22", "2021-03-25", 
  "2021-03-22", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", "0000-00-00", 
  "0000-00-00")

as.Date(d1, format = "%Y-%m-%d")

Seeing as you tagged this a lubridate (which I'd always use anyway) here's how you would do it in that.

lubridate::ymd(d1)