Converting numeric time to datetime POSIXct format in R

Question

I have a data frame containing what should be a datetime column that has been read into R. The time values are appearing as numeric time as seen in the below data example. I would like to convert these into datetime POSIXct or POSIXlt format, so that date and time can be viewed.

tdat <- c(974424L, 974430L, 974436L, 974442L, 974448L, 974454L, 974460L, 974466L, 974472L,
          974478L, 974484L, 974490L, 974496L, 974502L, 974508L, 974514L, 974520L, 974526L,
          974532L,974538L)

974424 should equate to 00:00:00 01/03/2011, but the do not know the origin time of the numeric values (i.e. 1970-01-01 used below does not work). I have tried using commands such as the below to achieve this and have spent time trying to get as.POXISct to work, but I haven’t found a solution (i.e. I either end up with a POSIXct object of NAs or end up with obscure datetime values).

Attempts to convert numeric time to datetime:

datetime <- as.POSIXct(strptime(time, format = "%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S"))
datetime <- as.POSIXct(as.numeric(time), origin='1970-01-01') 

I am sure that this is a simple thing to do. Any help would be greatly received. Thanks!

Answer 1

Try one of these depending on which time zone you want:

t.gmt <- as.POSIXct(3600 * (tdat - 974424), origin = '2011-03-01', tz = "GMT") 

t.local <- as.POSIXct(format(t.gmt))