R help - Mar 2016 - Error in make.names(col.names, unique = TRUE) : invalid multibyte string at '<ca>14 <4a>ULY 2012'

I?m trying to read in the data below from an Excel file (as a .csv file) in 
order to create an age (in years.%years) but am getting the error message in the
subject line.

I?ve tried saving the dates as dates in Excel and tried saving the dates as
text, both give me the same error message.  Can someone pls tell me what I?m
doing wrong?

Gender	DOB	Diagnosis	Screen Date
Male	 14 JULY 2012	No	 05 OCTOBER 2015
Female	 31 OCTOBER 2009	No	 30 NOVEMBER 2015
Female	 08 JULY 2009	No	 06 DECEMBER 2015
Male	 04 JUNE 2011	NA	 11 JANUARY 2016
Female	 21 AUGUST 2009	Yes	 01 FEBRUARY 2016
Male	 05 NOVEMBER 2007	No	 16 FEBRUARY 2016
Male	 01 JUNE 2009	NA	 29 FEBRUARY 2016


 
Ken
kmnanus at gmail.com
914-450-0816 (tel)
347-730-4813 (fax)

Hi Ken,
Without seeing your .csv file or how you are trying to read it, it's tough
to diagnose the trouble. I inserted commas between the columns in your data
snippet, pasted into Excel, saved as .csv file called "datesfile.csv"
in
the R working directory. Then, the following worked fine for me:

junk<-read.csv("datesfile.csv", header = TRUE)
junk # is a dataframe with headers Gender, DOB, etc.

 # Age at screening (in days):
as.Date(junk$Screen.Date,format="%d %B
%Y")-as.Date(junk$DOB,format="%d %B
%Y")

# Age at screening (in years):
as.numeric(as.Date(junk$Screen.Date,format="%d %B
%Y")-as.Date(junk$DOB,format="%d %B %Y"))/365.2425

I hope this helps.

-Dan


On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 11:34 AM, KMNanus <kmnanus at gmail.com> wrote:
> I?m trying to read in the data below from an Excel file (as a .csv file)
> in  order to create an age (in years.%years) but am getting the error
> message in the subject line.
>
> I?ve tried saving the dates as dates in Excel and tried saving the dates
> as text, both give me the same error message.  Can someone pls tell me what
> I?m doing wrong?
>
> Gender  DOB     Diagnosis       Screen Date
> Male     14 JULY 2012   No       05 OCTOBER 2015
> Female   31 OCTOBER 2009        No       30 NOVEMBER 2015
> Female   08 JULY 2009   No       06 DECEMBER 2015
> Male     04 JUNE 2011   NA       11 JANUARY 2016
> Female   21 AUGUST 2009 Yes      01 FEBRUARY 2016
> Male     05 NOVEMBER 2007       No       16 FEBRUARY 2016
> Male     01 JUNE 2009   NA       29 FEBRUARY 2016
>
>
>
> Ken
> kmnanus at gmail.com
> 914-450-0816 (tel)
> 347-730-4813 (fax)
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.



-- 
Dan Dalthorp, PhD
USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center
Forest Sciences Lab, Rm 189
3200 SW Jefferson Way
Corvallis, OR 97331
ph: 541-750-0953
ddalthorp at usgs.gov

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