Hello,

    This is mostly to developers, but in case I missed something in my
literature search, I am sending this to the broader audience.


   - Are there any plans in the works to make "time" classes a bit more
   friendly to the rest of the "R" world?  I am not suggesting to allow for
   fancy functions to manipulate times, per se, or to figure out how to
   properly "add" times or anything complicated.  Just some fixes to make it
   easier to work with the "time" classes.  Here is a sampling of some strange
   bugs with the time classes that, to my knowledge, don't exist with any other
   core classes:
      1. you cannot "unlist" a time without losing the class.  E.g., if you
      unlist "2010-12-14 20:25:40" (POSIXct), you get "1292387141", at
least on my
      OS & with my time zone.  Regardless of the exact number, unlisting a time
      class converts it to a numeric.
         - upon converting to a numeric, it seems there is an underlying,
         assumed origin of "1970-01-01 00:00:00".  However, this same
assumption does
         not underlie the conversion *back* to a POSIX time, e.g., through
         as.POSIXct() function.  Therefore, whenever a time is "accidentally"
         converted to a numeric, I have to force it back to a time through
         as.POSIXct(), *providing my own details* as to the origin.  There
         is no easy way to find the underlying origin.  This makes me
nervous for any
         persistent functions I create.  If the underlying origin ever
changes, then
         all this code will be inaccurate.  Maybe the origin will
never change, but
         regardless it makes more sense to allow for the same underlying origin
         default for "as.POSIXct" that is used when unlisting, or
similar activities
         that force the time into a numeric.
         2. you cannot perform functions that otherwise seem trivial, such
      as a "max" or "min".  I understand why, for instance, adding is
hard.  But
      what about max or min?  Greater than or less than are possible, as is
      order().  I have my own simple scripts using these 2 functions
in order to
      create a "max" & "min" for times, but it would be nice to have something
      vetted & official.

    If others could chime in with any strange behaviors they've seen in
working with times, maybe we could get a critical mass of issues that are
worthy of an overhaul.

                                          Thanks & Regards,
                                                    Mike


"Telescopes and bathyscaphes and sonar probes of Scottish lakes,
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Some x-ray slides, a music score, Minard's Napoleanic war:
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  -- xkcd

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