[ARROW-15659] [R] strptime should return NA (not error) with format mismatch

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 8.0.0
• Component/s: R
• Labels: pull-request-available
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/31114
• Assignee: Dragoș Moldovan-Grünfeld
• Reporter: Dragoș Moldovan-Grünfeld
• Created: 11/Feb/22 12:43
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 11:38
• Resolved: 30/Mar/22 13:59

Description

base::strptime() returns NA when the value passed to the format argument does not match the string to be parsed. The arrow binding currently errors in the same scenario.

strptime("2022-02-11", format = "%Y-%m-%d")
#> [1] "2022-02-11 GMT"
strptime("2022-02-11", format = "%Y %m-%d")
#> [1] NA

suppressMessages(library(lubridate))
suppressMessages(library(arrow))
suppressMessages(library(dplyr))

df <- tibble(x = "2022-02-11")

df %>% 
  mutate(z = strptime(x, format = "%Y-%m %d"))
#> # A tibble: 1 × 2
#>   x          z     
#>   <chr>      <dttm>
#> 1 2022-02-11 NA

df %>% 
  record_batch() %>% 
  mutate(z = strptime(x, format = "%Y-%m %d")) %>% 
  collect()
#> Error: Invalid: Failed to parse string: '2022-02-11' as a scalar of type timestamp[ms]

Issue Links

• blocks: ARROW-14848 [R] Implement bindings for lubridate's parse_date_time
• is blocked by: ARROW-15665 [C++] Add error handling option to StrptimeOptions
• is depended upon by: ARROW-15804 [R] Improve as.Date() error message when supplying several tryFormats
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #12402