R convert character vector values to Date values

Question

i have vector with the following values.

> ga.nu$date
[1] "20150901" "20150902" "20150903" ...

> class(ga.nu$date) 
[1] character

i want to convert his values to date in the following structure

   >  ga.nu$date
   [1] "2015-09-01" "2015-09-02" "2015-09-03"

   >class(ga.nu$date)
   [1] "Date"

i've already trying

   > as.Date(ga.nu$date,"%Y-%m-%d)
   [1] NA NA NA

but i received null values

Answer 1

The format argument in the as.Date() function refers not to the target format but to the one you are trying to convert. So simple change your code to:

ga.nu$date = as.Date(ga.nu$date,"%Y%m%d)