Personally I wouldn't risk trying to work with that data. Go back to your data import agreement - you have on of those right? - and check what it states in there. If you dont have one of those, make one and get the vendor to agree to it. They should be providing a robust, structured dataset, which they currently are not. For instance, what does 12112014, mean? Is it december or november. As with everything programmatic - specify, specify, specify, then code. Programming is in fact 99% irrelevant, specification and documentation is the key.
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