title: read.table and apply functions to a column
body: <p>I am reading an apache logfile using read.table and am wondering if it's somehow possible to apply a function (i.e. strptime ) while the data are being imported, instead of post-processing it.</p>
  
  <p>More details as requested:
  The column containing the date has the format:</p>
  
  <pre><code>[10/Nov/2011:06:25:14
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I can successfully parse it using:</p>
  
  <pre><code>strptime(red[1,4],format="[%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>or</p>
  
  <pre><code>as.POSIXct(strptime(red[1,4],format="[%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S"))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but</p>
  
  <pre><code>as.POSIXct(red[1,4],format="[%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>fails. Hence I cannot use POSIXct in colClasses AFAIK.</p>