Go style date formats for R

date-parser.R

library("stringi")

ref <- ISOdatetime(2006, 01, 02, 15, 4, 0, "MST")

formats <- c("%H", "%Y", "%y", "%b", "%B", "%m", "%d", "%e", "%a",
  "%A", "%I", "%l", "%p", "%Z", "%z", "%M", "%S")
# Must manually respecify TZ because strftime doesn't use the time zone
# stored in ref
conv <- vapply(formats, function(x) strftime(ref, x, tz = "MST"), character(1))

make_format <- function(x) {
  stringi::stri_replace_all_regex(x, unname(conv), names(conv), vectorize_all = FALSE)
}


parse_time <- function(x, format) {
  as.POSIXct(strptime(x, make_format(format)))
}

parse_self <- function(x) parse_time(x, x)
parse_self("02 Jan 06 15:04 -0700")
make_format("Jan 2, 2006")