Convert character YYYY-MM-00 into date YYYY-MM in R - r

Question

I imported Excel data into R and I have a problem to convert dates.
In R, my data are character and look like :
date<-c('1971-02-00 00:00:00', '1979-06-00 00:00:00')
I would like to convert character into date (MM/YYYY) but the '00' value used for days poses a problem and 'NA' are returned systematically.
It works when I manually replace '00' with '01' and then use as.yearmon, ymd and format. But I have lots of dates to change and I don't know how to change all my '00' into '01' in R.
# data exemple
date1<-c('1971-02-00 00:00:00', '1979-06-00 00:00:00')
# removing time -> doesn't work because of the '00' day
date1c<-format(strptime(date1, format = "%Y-%m-%d"), "%Y/%m/%d")
date1c<-format(strptime(date1, format = '%Y-%m'), '%Y/%m')
# trying to convert character into date -> doesn't work either
date1c<-ymd(date1)
date1c<-strptime(date1, format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
date1c<-as.Date(date1, format="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
date1c<as.yearmon(date1, format='%Y%m')
# everything works if days are '01'
date2<-c('1971-02-01 00:00:00', '1979-06-01 00:00:00')
date2c<-as.yearmon(ymd(format(strptime(date2, format = "%Y-%m-%d"), "%Y/%m/%d")))
date2c
If you have an idea to do it or an another idea to solve my problem, I would be thankful!

Answer 1

Use gsub to replace -00 with -01.
date1<-c('1971-02-01 00:00:00', '1979-06-01 00:00:00')
date1 <- gsub("-00", "-01", date1)
date1c <-format(strptime(date1, format = "%Y-%m-%d"), "%Y/%m/%d")
> date1c
[1] "1971/02/01" "1979/06/01"

Answer 2

Another possibility could be:
as.Date(paste0(substr(date1, 1, 9), "1"), format = "%Y-%m-%d")
[1] "1971-02-01" "1979-06-01"
Here it extracts the first nine characters, pastes it together with 1 and then converts it into a date object.

Answer 3

These alternatives each accept a vector input and produce a vector as output.
Date output
These all will accept a vector as input and produce a Date vector as the output.
# 1. replace first occurrence of '00 ' with '01 ' and then convert to Date
as.Date(sub("00 ", "01 ", date1))
## [1] "1971-02-01" "1979-06-01"
# 2. convert to yearmon class and then to Date
library(zoo)
as.Date(as.yearmon(date1, "%Y-%m"))
## [1] "1971-02-01" "1979-06-01"
# 3. insert a 1 and then convert to Date
as.Date(paste(1, date1), "%d %Y-%m")
## [1] "1971-02-01" "1979-06-01"
yearmon output
Note that if you really are trying to represent just months and years then yearmon class directly represents such objects without the kludge of using an unused day of the month. Such objects are internally represented as a year plus a fraction of a year, i.e. year + 0 for January, year + 1/12 for February, etc. They display in a meaningful way, they sort in the expected manner and can be manipulated, e.g. take the difference between two such objects or add 1/12 to get the next month, etc. As with the others it takes a vector in and produces a vector out.
library(zoo)
as.yearmon(date1, "%Y-%m")
## [1] "Feb 1971" "Jun 1979"
character output
If you want character output rather than Date or yearmon output then these variations work and again accept a vector as input and produce a vector as output:
# 1. replace -00 and everything after that with a string having 0 characters
sub("-00.*", "", date1)
## [1] "1971-02" "1979-06"
# 2. convert to yearmon and then format that
library(zoo)
format(as.yearmon(date1, "%Y-%m"), "%Y-%m")
## [1] "1971-02" "1979-06"
# 3. convert to Date class and then format that
format(as.Date(paste(1, date1), "%d %Y-%m"), "%Y-%m")
## [1] "1971-02" "1979-06"
# 4. pick off the first 7 characters
substring(date1, 1, 7)
## [1] "1971-02" "1979-06"