[R] POSIXct vs Dates

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:

> I noticed the addition of the Dates class for dates without times, in R
> 1.9.  I am making extensive use of POSIXct at present and would like to
> know whether it is worth changing to Dates.  What are a few of the
> trade-offs?

You lose the ability to handle times and timezones.

Those who do not understand timezones have no opportunity to make errors.

There is probably a little less support for Dates at present, but you can 
coerce to POSIXct if you need to.

(It's really the second point that motivated us.)

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595