R Error in as.POSIXlt.character : string not standard unambiguous format (2 Examples)

In this R tutorial you’ll learn how to deal with the “Error in as.POSIXlt.character : character string is not in a standard unambiguous format”.

Creation of Exemplifying Data

x <- c("1283934195", "1483236115", "1557924294")  # Example data
x                                                 # Print dates in RStudio
# [1] "1283934195" "1483236115" "1557924294"

Example 1: Replicating the Error Message – character string is not in a standard unambiguous format

as.POSIXct(x,                                     # as.POSIXct leads to error
           origin = "1980-01-01")
# Error in as.POSIXlt.character(x, tz, ...) : 
#   character string is not in a standard unambiguous format

Example 2: Solving the Error Message – character string is not in a standard unambiguous format

as.POSIXct(as.numeric(as.character(x)),           # as.POSIXct returns dates
           origin = "1980-01-01")
# [1] "2020-09-07 10:23:15 CEST" "2027-01-01 03:01:55 CET"  "2029-05-14 14:44:54 CEST"

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