R help - Jun 2012 - factor coercion with read.csv or read.table

How do I fix this error ? I tried coercion to a vector but that didn't work.

msci <-read.csv("..MSCIexUS.csv", header=TRUE)

head(msci)

         Date  index
1 Dec 31, 1969    100
2 Jan 30, 1970 97.655
3 Feb 27, 1970 96.154
4 Mar 31, 1970 95.857
5 Apr 30, 1970 85.564
6 May 29, 1970 79.005
> str(msci)
'data.frame':	510 obs. of  2 variables:
 $ Date : Factor w/ 510 levels "Apr 28, 1972",..: 98 178 134 311 13
342 268
228 55 481 ...
 $ index: Factor w/ 510 levels "100","1,000.302",..: 1 499
493 488 444 412
418 434 441 448 ...

> msci$Date <-as.Date(msci$Date, dateFormat='%b %d, %Y')
Error in charToDate(x) : 
  character string is not in a standard unambiguous format


--
View this message in context:
http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/factor-coercion-with-read-csv-or-read-table-tp4632622.html
Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Hello,

Try option stringsAsFactors, see ?read.csv or ?read.table
As for the thousands separator, see ?format

Hope this helps,

Rui Barradas

Em 07-06-2012 03:09, eric escreveu:
> How do I fix this error ? I tried coercion to a vector but that didn't
work.
>
> msci <-read.csv("..MSCIexUS.csv", header=TRUE)
>
> head(msci)
>
>           Date  index
> 1 Dec 31, 1969    100
> 2 Jan 30, 1970 97.655
> 3 Feb 27, 1970 96.154
> 4 Mar 31, 1970 95.857
> 5 Apr 30, 1970 85.564
> 6 May 29, 1970 79.005
>
>> str(msci)
> 'data.frame':	510 obs. of  2 variables:
>   $ Date : Factor w/ 510 levels "Apr 28, 1972",..: 98 178 134 311
13 342 268
> 228 55 481 ...
>   $ index: Factor w/ 510 levels "100","1,000.302",..: 1
499 493 488 444 412
> 418 434 441 448 ...
>
>
>> msci$Date <-as.Date(msci$Date, dateFormat='%b %d, %Y')
> Error in charToDate(x) :
>    character string is not in a standard unambiguous format
>
>
> --
> View this message in context:
http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/factor-coercion-with-read-csv-or-read-table-tp4632622.html
> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>