Convert months mmm to numeric

Question

I have been given a csv with a column called month as a char variable with the first three letters of the month. E.g.:

\"Jan\", \"Feb\",\"Mar\",...\"Dec\"
         


        

Answer 1

Use match and the predefined vector month.abb:

tst <- c("Jan","Mar","Dec")
match(tst,month.abb)
[1]  1  3 12