as.Date
as.Date(dates,format = '%m/%d/%y')
as.Date("08/30/2012", format = "%m/%d/%Y") #format tells the format of input not output
#####use format to get output in a certain way
format(as.POSIXct("080406 10:11", format = "%y%m%d %H:%M"), "%m/%d/%Y %I:%M %p")
# IN R single and double quotes are different
https://www.r-bloggers.com/date-formats-in-r/