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I have a file with data in form {date, value}:
2010-05-19 17
2010-05-20 20
2010-05-21 19
...
How would I import such data in form {DateList, value}?

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Kudos for using the ISO 8601 standard date format. The Fred Flintstone Format (MM/DD/YY) should be banned! :-) – stevenvh Oct 2 '12 at 10:16
@stevenvh as should be yards, inches and non-ISO units in general (my favorite is psi). – Yves Klett Oct 2 '12 at 10:57

1 Answer

up vote 12 down vote accepted

Import[(* file *), "Table", "DateStringFormat" -> {"Year", "-", "Month", "-", "Day"}] seems to work...

As a test:

Export["test.dat",
       {{"2010-05-19", 17}, {"2010-05-20", 20}, {"2010-05-21", 19}},
       "FieldSeparators" -> " "];

Import["test.dat", "Table",
       "DateStringFormat" -> {"Year", "-", "Month", "-", "Day"}]
{{{2010, 5, 19}, 17}, {{2010, 5, 20}, 20}, {{2010, 5, 21}, 19}}
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Beat me by a minute! – Szabolcs Jan 29 '12 at 10:21
Can you fix up yours to explicitly show that it works on the sample data? Then I'll delete mine. – Szabolcs Jan 29 '12 at 10:23
@J.M. It seems that no "-" is needed. Thanks. – enedene Jan 29 '12 at 10:28
@Szabolcs, Done. – 0x4A4D♦ Jan 29 '12 at 10:31
3  
@enedene: I wanted to show how to indicate delimiters explicitly, should you encounter a more peculiar date format. Replace the dashes accordingly in the code above. – 0x4A4D♦ Jan 29 '12 at 10:33
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