title: Specify custom Date format for colClasses argument in read.table/read.csv
body: <h2>Question:</h2>
  
  <p><strong>Is there a way to specify the Date format when using the colClasses argument in read.table/read.csv?</strong></p>
  
  <p>(I realise I can convert after importing, but with many date columns like this, it would be easier to do it in the import step)</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <h2>Example:</h2>
  
  <p>I have a .csv with date columns in the format <code>%d/%m/%Y</code>. </p>
  
  <pre><code>dataImport &lt;- read.csv("data.csv", colClasses = c("factor","factor","Date"))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This gets the conversion wrong. For example, <code>15/07/2008</code> becomes <code>0015-07-20</code>. </p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <h2>Reproducible code:</h2>
  
  <pre><code>data &lt;- 
  structure(list(func_loc = structure(c(1L, 2L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 
  3L, 4L, 4L, 5L), .Label = c("3076WAG0003", "3076WAG0004", "3076WAG0007", 
  "3076WAG0009", "3076WAG0010"), class = "factor"), order_type = structure(c(3L, 
  3L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 2L, 2L, 3L, 1L), .Label = c("PM01", "PM02", 
  "PM03"), class = "factor"), actual_finish = structure(c(4L, 6L, 
  1L, 2L, 3L, 7L, 1L, 8L, 1L, 5L), .Label = c("", "11/03/2008", 
  "14/08/2008", "15/07/2008", "17/03/2008", "19/01/2009", "22/09/2008", 
  "6/09/2007"), class = "factor")), .Names = c("func_loc", "order_type", 
  "actual_finish"), row.names = c(NA, 10L), class = "data.frame")
  
  
  write.csv(data,"data.csv", row.names = F)                                                        
  
  dataImport &lt;- read.csv("data.csv")
  str(dataImport)
  dataImport
  
  dataImport &lt;- read.csv("data.csv", colClasses = c("factor","factor","Date"))
  str(dataImport)
  dataImport
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And here's what the output looks like:</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/QM1bM.png" alt="code output"></p>