Issues using DateTime function with Julia - function

Question

When I read a csv file in my Jupyter notebook I got the following output
54×9 Array{Any,2}:
"\"25 Nov 2015\"" 28637 11314 3804 2536 10675 4808 14122 3955
"\"18 Nov 2015\"" 28634 11314 3804 2536 10672 4808 14122 3955
"\"11 Nov 2015\"" 28635 11314 3805 2536 10672 4808 14122 3955
"\"4 Nov 2015\"" 28607 11314 3810 2536 10672 4808 14089 3955
"\"25 Oct 2015\"" 28539 11298 3806 2535 10672 4808 14061 3955
⋮ ⋮
"\"12 May 2014\"" 260 182 248 171 12 11 "" ""
"\"1 May 2014\"" 239 160 226 149 13 11 "" ""
"\"14 Apr 2014\"" 176 110 168 108 8 2 "" ""
"\"31 Mar 2014\"" 130 82 122 80 8 2 "" ""
"\"22 Mar 2014\"" 49 29 49 29 "" "" "" ""
I want to change the first column content into a day-month-year format in order to calculate the years passed since first observation (which in this case is my last row).
I tried converting the column using string, then using a for loop (Suppose the name of my file is "ebola"
dias = string.(ebola[:,1])
for i = 1:length(dias)
dias[i] = DateTime(dias[i], "d-m-y")
end
After that, I got this error message
ArgumentError: Unable to parse date time. Expected directive DatePart(d) at char 1
I suppose this error arises because the string has a non-conventional format to manipulate it, with four "" symbols and some backslashes:
"\"25 Nov 2015\""
I must add that when i type, for example:
length("\"22 Mar 2014\"")
result is 13 when you can count 17 characters so clearly backslashes are making some "noise".
What can I don to convert the string in a proper format in order to perform the tasks I want to do?
Any help will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

The reason is that "\"22 Mar 2014\"" is a string containing " characters inside. You can check it by printing it:
julia> s = "\"22 Mar 2014\""
"\"22 Mar 2014\""
julia> print(s)
"22 Mar 2014"
In order to parse the date use a proper format string, e.g.:
julia> Date(s,"\"d u y\"")
2014-03-22
Here is how you can perform the conversion from your array:
julia> x = ["\"25 Nov 2015\"" 28637 11314 3804 2536 10675 4808 14122 3955
"\"18 Nov 2015\"" 28634 11314 3804 2536 10672 4808 14122 3955
"\"11 Nov 2015\"" 28635 11314 3805 2536 10672 4808 14122 3955
"\"4 Nov 2015\"" 28607 11314 3810 2536 10672 4808 14089 3955
"\"25 Oct 2015\"" 28539 11298 3806 2535 10672 4808 14061 3955]
5×9 Array{Any,2}:
"\"25 Nov 2015\"" 28637 11314 3804 2536 10675 4808 14122 3955
"\"18 Nov 2015\"" 28634 11314 3804 2536 10672 4808 14122 3955
"\"11 Nov 2015\"" 28635 11314 3805 2536 10672 4808 14122 3955
"\"4 Nov 2015\"" 28607 11314 3810 2536 10672 4808 14089 3955
"\"25 Oct 2015\"" 28539 11298 3806 2535 10672 4808 14061 3955
julia> Date.(x[:,1], "\"d u y\"")
5-element Array{Date,1}:
2015-11-25
2015-11-18
2015-11-11
2015-11-04
2015-10-25