Convert Character Date format to R Date

Question

I have data in Character format like 'Feb-20'. I need to convert it to '2020-02-29' R Date format. Code should be generic to convert any month and return last day of month.

repmonth  <- 'Feb-20'

Answer 1

We can use strptime :

   strptime('Feb-20',format="%b-%d", tz="UTC")

[1] "2020-02-20 UTC"

Or using lubridate as @Neem Kamal suggests:

lubridate::ymd(paste0("2020-","Feb-20"))

EDIT :

To return the last day of the month:

lubridate::ceiling_date(strptime('Feb-20',format="%b-%d", tz="UTC"),"month") -1
[1] "2020-02-29 23:59:59 UTC"

Works for March as well:

lubridate::ceiling_date(strptime('Mar-20',format="%b-%d", tz="UTC"),"month") -1
[1] "2020-03-31 23:59:59 UTC"

Drawbacks: It returns time too.

Answer 2

29 is fixed? You could use the lubridate package:

lubridate::myd(paste0('Feb-20','-29'))

Answer 3

Here you go,

library(lubridate)
repmonth  <- 'Feb-20'
rollback(ymd(paste0("2020-",repmonth) ) + month(1), roll_to_first = F)

The above will give what exactly you are looking for. The last day of the month whether it's leap year or not.