[R] time zones, daylight saving etc.
Prof Brian Ripley
ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Thu May 12 07:15:28 CEST 2005
Would it not just be easier to set the timezone to GMT for the duration of
the calculations? I don't see an OS mentioned here, but on most TZ=GMT
for the session will do it.
On Thu, 12 May 2005, Rich FitzJohn wrote:
> Hi,
>
> seq.dates() in the chron package does not allow creating sequences by
> minutes, so you'd have to roll your own sequence generator.
>
> Looks like the tzone attribute of the times is lost when using min(),
> max() and seq(). You can apply it back manually, but it does not
> affect the calculation, since POSIXct times are stored as seconds
> since 1/1/1970 (?DateTimeClasses).
>
> ## These dates/times just span the move from NZDT to NZST:
> dt.dates <- paste(rep(15:16, c(5,7)), "03", "2003", sep="/")
> dt.times <- paste(c(19:23, 0:6), "05", sep=":")
> dt <- paste(dt.dates, dt.times)
>
> ## No shift in times, or worrying about daylight savings; appropriate
> ## iff the device doing the recording was not itself adjusting for
> ## daylight savings, presumably.
> datetime <- as.POSIXct(strptime(dt, "%d/%m/%Y %H:%M"), "GMT")
>
> ## Create two objects with all the times in your range, one with the
> ## tzone attribute set back to GMT (to match datetimes), and one
> ## without this.
> mindata1 <- mindata2 <- seq(from=min(datetime), to=max(datetime),
> by="mins")
> attr(mindata2, "tzone") <- "GMT"
>
> fmt <- "%Y %m %d %H %M"
> ## These both do the matching correctly:
> match(format(datetime, fmt), format(mindata1, fmt, tz="GMT"))
> match(format(datetime, fmt), format(mindata2, fmt, tz="GMT"))
>
> ## However, the first of these will not, as it gets the timezone all
> ## wrong, since it's neither specified in the call to format(), or as
> ## an attribute of the POSIXct object.
> match(format(datetime, fmt), format(mindata1, fmt))
> match(format(datetime, fmt), format(mindata2, fmt))
>
> ## It is also possible to run match() directly off the POSIXct object,
> ## but I'm not sure how this will interact with things like leap
> ## seconds:
> match(datetime, mindata1)
>
> Time zones do my head in, so you probably want to check this all
> pretty carefully. Looks like there's lots of gotchas (e.g. subsetting
> a POSIXct object strips the tzone attribute).
>
> Cheers,
> Rich
>
> On 5/12/05, Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You could use the chron package. It represents date times without
>> using time zones so you can't have this sort of problem.
>>
>> On 5/10/05, Carla Meurk <ksm32 at student.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>>> Hi, I have a whole bunch of data, which looks like:
>>>
>>> 15/03/2003 10:20 1
>>> 15/03/2003 10:21 0
>>> 15/03/2003 12:02 0
>>> 16/03/2003 06:10 0
>>> 16/03/2003 06:20 0.5
>>> 16/03/2003 06:30 0
>>> 16/03/2003 06:40 0
>>> 16/03/2003 06:50 0
>>>
>>> 18/03/2003 20:10 0.5
>>> etc. (times given on a 24 hour clock)
>>>
>>> and goes on for years. I have some code:
>>>
>>> data<-read.table("H:/rainfall_data.txt",h=T)
>>> library(survival)
>>> datetime <- as.POSIXct(strptime(paste(data$V1, data$V2), "%d/%m/%Y
>>> %H:%M"), tz="NZST")
>>>
>>> which produces:
>>>
>>> [10] "2003-03-13 21:13:00 New Zealand Daylight Time"
>>> [11] "2003-03-15 13:20:00 New Zealand Daylight Time"
>>> [12] "2003-03-15 22:20:00 New Zealand Daylight Time"
>>> [13] "2003-03-15 22:21:00 New Zealand Daylight Time"
>>> [14] "2003-03-16 00:02:00 New Zealand Daylight Time"
>>> [15] "2003-03-16 18:10:00 New Zealand Standard Time"
>>> [16] "2003-03-16 18:20:00 New Zealand Standard Time"
>>> [17] "2003-03-16 18:30:00 New Zealand Standard Time"
>>>
>>> My problem is that "15/03/2003 12:02" has become "16/03/2003 00:02"
>>> i.e. it is 12 hours behind (as is everything else), but also, I do not
>>> want to change time zones.
>>>
>>> The 12 hour delay is not really a problem just an annoyance, but the
>>> time zone change is a problem because later on I need to match up data
>>> by time using
>>>
>>> mindata<-seq(from=min(datetime),to=max(datetime),by="mins")
>>> newdata<-matrix(0,length(mindata),1)
>>> newdata[match(format.POSIXct(datetime,"%Y %m %d %H
>>> %M"),format.POSIXct(mindata,"%Y %m %d %H %M"))]<-data$V3
>>>
>>> and things go wrong here with matching repeating times/missing times
>>> around the timezone changes and, my resulting vector is 1 hour shorter
>>> than my other series. From the R help I see that my OS may be to blame
>>> but, even if I specify tz="GMT" I still get NZST and NZDT. Can someone
>>> help?
>>>
>>> I hope this all makes sense
>>>
>>> Carla
>>>
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>>>
>>
>> ______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
> --
> Rich FitzJohn
> rich.fitzjohn <at> gmail.com | http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/richa183
> You are in a maze of twisty little functions, all alike
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>
--
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
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