Keep time zone information when converting POSIX object to string

user_6029286 0
Viewed 147

I'm trying to convert a POSIX object to a string in R by using

as.character(Sys.time()) which returns "2021-09-28 08:38:13"

However, if I just run Sys.time() I get "2021-09-28 08:38:13 CEST".

How do I get the time zone information to be converted to the string, too?

r posix datetime
4 Answers

use option usetz = TRUE

as.character(Sys.time(), usetz = TRUE)
user_167291750

You can use format with '%Z' to denote timezone.

format(Sys.time(), '%Y-%m-%d %T %Z')
user_39629140

Using strftime(.

strftime(Sys.time(), '%c')
# [1] "Tue 28 Sep 2021 08:43:06 CEST"

or

strftime(Sys.time(), '%F %X %Z')
# [1] "2021-09-28 08:45:42 CEST"
user_65740380

The same thing could be done with format with usetz = TRUE:

format(Sys.time(), usetz = TRUE)

Output:

2021-09-28 08:38:13 CEST

Timings:

a <- proc.time()
for (i in 1:100000)
{
format(Sys.time(), usetz = TRUE)
}
print(proc.time() - a)
b <- proc.time()
for (i in 1:100000)
{
as.character(Sys.time(), usetz = TRUE)
}
print(proc.time() - b)

format (mine) is quicker than as.character (Park's answer). The output is:

   user  system elapsed 
 11.040   0.520  11.563 
   user  system elapsed 
 11.930   0.290  12.229

The second one is Park's.

user_87083640
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