Reading timestamp data in R from multiple time zones

Question

I have a column of time stamps in character format that looks like this:

2015-09-24 06:00:00 UTC

2015-09-24 05:00:00 UTC

dateTimeZone <- c         


        

Answer 1

Another way using lubridate...

library(stringr)
library(lubridate)

normalize.timezone <- function(dates, target_tz = local.timezone) {
    tzones <- str_split(dates, ' ')
    tzones <- lapply(tzones, '[', 3)
    tzones <- unlist(tzones)
    dts <- str_replace_all(dates, ' [\\w\\-\\/\\+]+$', '')
    tmp <- lapply(1:length(dates), function(i) {
        with_tz(as.POSIXct(dts[ i ], tz = tzones[ i ]), target_tz)
    })
    final <- unlist(tmp)
    attributes(final) <- attributes(tmp[[ 1 ]])
    final
}

dates <- c('2019-01-06 23:00:00 MST', 
           '2019-01-22 14:00:00 America/Los_Angeles', 
           '2019-01-05 UTC-4', 
           '2019-01-15 15:00:00 Europe/Moscow')
(normalize.timezone(dates, 'EST'))