I know this: > library(date) > x="1979-04-04" > try=as.date(x, "ymd") > print(try) [1] 4Apr79
and that `x' here has to be a string, e.g.: > x=1979-04-04 > print(x) [1] 1971 I'm stuck in reading from a file. I say: > A <- read.table(file="try") > print(A) V1 V2 1 1979-04-04 -1.04712042 2 1979-04-06 0.54538055 3 1979-04-09 0.09663392 4 1979-04-11 0.57119871 5 1979-04-12 0.73594112 6 1979-04-17 -1.54422087 7 1979-04-18 -0.20595691 8 1979-04-19 0.12700429 9 1979-04-20 0.42016807 10 1979-04-23 -1.46838241 I am confused - is V1 a number or a string? Looking at it, it must be a string. But yet: > library(date) > try=as.date(A$V1, "ymd") Error in as.date(A$V1, "ymd") : Cannot coerce to date format In short, how do I parse in dates of the format yyyy-mm-dd (the ISO 8601 format) or the yyyymmdd format. And if I may ask the next step: How do I tell R that I have a file full of data all of which is time-series data, where V1 is the datetime vector, and all the other columns are time-series, to do things like ARMA models and ts plots with? -- Ajay Shah Consultant [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Economic Affairs http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah Ministry of Finance, New Delhi ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html