timestamp - How to convert time stamp string "2014-07-20T05:11:49.988Z" into POSIXt in R?

Question

How to convert time stamp string “2014-07-20T05:11:49.988Z” into POSIXt in R?

I want to know why the second is represented in 3 decimel places? also what is the meaning of appending the 'Z' at the end of time stamp? Can anybody know how this string can be converted into time in R

Answer 1

The "Z" is shorthand for UTC. You can parse this in base R with

x <- as.POSIXct("2014-07-20T05:11:49.998Z", 
    format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%OSZ", tz="GMT")

Note that you generally either use POSIXct or POSIXlt rather than POSIXt directly (both have POSIXt as a base class)