Time Formatting Parsing in R Programming Language

Here’s the translated code and explanation in R, formatted in Markdown suitable for Hugo:

R supports time formatting and parsing via pattern-based layouts.

library(lubridate)

# Here's a basic example of formatting a time
# according to ISO 8601, which is similar to RFC3339
t <- now()
print(format(t, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z"))

# Time parsing uses similar format specifiers
t1 <- parse_date_time("2012-11-01T22:08:41+00:00", "YmdHMOS")
print(t1)

# format() and parse_date_time() use format specifiers.
# Here are some examples:
print(format(t, "%I:%M %p"))
print(format(t, "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y"))
print(format(t, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%OS6%z"))

form <- "%I %M %p"
t2 <- parse_date_time("8 41 PM", form)
print(t2)

# For purely numeric representations you can also
# use standard string formatting with the extracted
# components of the time value.
cat(sprintf("%d-%02d-%02dT%02d:%02d:%02d-00:00\n",
            year(t), month(t), day(t),
            hour(t), minute(t), second(t)))

# parse_date_time() will return NA on malformed input
# and you can use lubridate's is.na() to check for parsing problems.
ansic <- "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y"
result <- parse_date_time("8:41PM", ansic)
print(is.na(result))

When you run this script, you’ll get output similar to this:

[1] "2023-06-15T10:30:45+0200"
[1] "2012-11-01 22:08:41 UTC"
[1] "10:30 AM"
[1] "Thu Jun 15 10:30:45 2023"
[1] "2023-06-15T10:30:45.123456+0200"
[1] "2023-06-15 20:41:00 UTC"
2023-06-15T10:30:45-00:00
[1] TRUE

In R, we use the lubridate package for advanced date and time manipulation. The format() function is used for formatting dates, while parse_date_time() is used for parsing strings into date-time objects.

The format specifiers in R are slightly different from those in other languages. For example, %Y is used for four-digit year, %m for month, %d for day, %H for hour (24-hour clock), %M for minute, and %S for second.

R doesn’t have a direct equivalent to Go’s reference time concept. Instead, it uses these format specifiers to define the layout of dates and times.

For parsing, if the input doesn’t match the specified format, parse_date_time() will return NA (Not Available), which can be checked using is.na().

This example demonstrates basic time formatting and parsing in R, showing how to work with different date-time formats and handle parsing errors.