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Mastering Dates and Times in R: A Comprehensive Guide to Operations with date, POSIXct, POSIXlt, and strptime Functions

The Beginner’s Guide to Dates and Times in R Programming:

Dates and times are crucial for data analysis and visualization. In R, there are several ways to represent dates and times, including date, POSIXct, and POSIXlt.


Date is a basic date class in R that only stores the date, whereas POSIXct and POSIXlt store both the date and the time. POSIXct represents the time as the number of seconds since January 1, 1970, whereas POSIXlt stores the time as a list of components.

Let's explore some examples of working with dates and times in R:

Creating Dates

To create a date object, we can use the as.Date() function:

date1 <- as.Date("2022-03-31")
date2 <- as.Date("2022-04-01")

We can also create a date object using the Sys.Date() function, which returns the current system date:

today <- Sys.Date()

Creating POSIXct and POSIXlt

To create a POSIXct object, we can use the as.POSIXct() function:

datetime1 <- as.POSIXct("2022-03-31 15:30:00", tz = "UTC")
datetime2 <- as.POSIXct("2022-04-01 09:45:00", tz = "America/New_York")

We can also create a POSIXlt object using the as.POSIXlt() function:

datetime3 <- as.POSIXlt("2022-03-31 15:30:00", tz = "UTC")
datetime4 <- as.POSIXlt("2022-04-01 09:45:00", tz = "America/New_York")

Note that POSIXlt stores the time as a list of components:

> datetime3
[1] "2022-03-31 15:30:00 UTC"
> str(datetime3)
List of 11
 $ sec   : num 0
 $ min   : num 30
 $ hour  : num 15
 $ mday  : num 31
 $ mon   : num 2
 $ year  : num 122
 $ wday  : num 5
 $ yday  : num 89
 $ isdst : int 0
 $ zone  : chr "UTC"
 $ gmtoff: num 0

Operations between Time Zones

Here is a list of some common operations on dates and times in R:

Creating date-time objects:

  • Sys.time() function returns the current date and time.
  • as.Date() function converts a character string to a Date object.
  • as.POSIXct() function converts a character string to a POSIXct object (a date-time object with timezone).
  • as.POSIXlt() function converts a character string to a POSIXlt object (a date-time object with more detailed components).

Extracting components from date-time objects:

  • year(), month(), day(), hour(), minute(), second() functions return the corresponding component of a date-time object.
  • wday() function returns the weekday of a date-time object.

Formatting date-time objects:

  • format() function formats a date-time object according to a specified format.
  • strftime() function formats a date-time object according to a specified format, but only works on POSIXlt objects.
  • paste() function combines date and time components into a single string.

Arithmetic with date-time objects:

  • difftime() function calculates the difference between two date-time objects in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months.
  • as.numeric() function converts a date-time object to the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1, 1970).

Time zones:

  • Sys.timezone() function returns the current time zone.
  • attr() function returns the attributes of a date-time object, including the time zone.
  • attr<-() function sets the attributes of a date-time object, including the time zone.
  • format() function allows specifying a time zone for the output format.

strptime Function

Now, let's talk about the strptime() function. The strptime() function is used to parse a character string representing a date-time object into a POSIXlt object. It takes two arguments: the character string to be parsed and the format of the string. The format string consists of special codes that represent the different components of the date-time object, such as %Y for the year with century, %m for the month, %d for the day, %H for the hour, %M for the minute, and %S for the second. For example:

str <- "2023-04-01 15:30:00"
dt <- strptime(str, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")

In this example, we have a character string representing a date-time object, and we use the %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S format string to parse it into a POSIXlt object. The resulting dt object has components for year, month, day, hour, minute, and second.

Note that the strptime() function assumes the date-time string is in the local time zone. If the time zone is different, you should use the as.POSIXlt() or as.POSIXct() functions instead and specify the time zone using the tz argument.

Practice Material:

Here's a beginner-friendly practice material for you:

Creating date-time objects:

  • Use the Sys.time() function to print the current date and time.
  • Create a Date object for your birthdate using the as.Date() function.
  • Create a POSIXct object for a specific date and time using the as.POSIXct() function.
  • Create a POSIXlt object for a specific date and time using the as.POSIXlt() function.

Extracting components from date-time objects:

  • Use the year(), month(), day(), hour(), minute(), second(), and wday() functions to extract different components from a date-time object.

Formatting date-time objects:

  • Use the format() function to format a date-time object according to a specified format.
  • Use the paste() function to combine date and time components into a single string.

Arithmetic with date-time objects:

  • Use the difftime() function to calculate the difference between two date-time objects in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months.
  • Use the as.numeric() function to convert a date-time object to the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1, 1970).

Time zones:

  • Use the Sys.timezone() function to get the current time zone.
  • Use the attr() function to get the attributes of a date-time object, including the time zone.
  • Use the attr<-() function to set the attributes of a date-time object, including the time zone.
You can also look into how to use Dates and Times in Plotting in R.

For more practice you should start swirl's lessons in R Programming. Complete download process of swirl and R Programming is here, click on the link!

You can look in to the practice and reading material that is provided in the text book, click here to download the textbook.

Lecture slides can be downloaded from here. It would be great if you go through them too.

I hope that this blogpost has been helpful in introducing Dates and Times in R Programming.
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