[R] Looking for a special date function in R

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 21 Jan 2009, Sergey Goriatchev wrote:

> Dear Prof. Ripley,
>
> Thank you for help.
> Yes, that is an interesting question you pose. I already thought
> myself how February should be handled, as EDATE(31.08.2008; -6)
> returns 29.02.2008.
> In Excel it is not a problem, since this nonexisting date is then used
> in VLOOKUP function where one can have Range.Lookup argument set to
> TRUE and then it finds the closest value.
> Example from Excel (value for 29.02.2008 is recovered from the sorted
> table with VLOOKUP function):
>
>
> 21.07.2008	10.00
> 31.08.2008	20.00
> 28.02.2008	30.00
> 01.03.2008	40.00
> 02.03.2008	50.00
> 03.03.2008	60.00
>
> 29.02.2008	30
>
> I wonder if that kind of functionality is available in R, or one has
> to write a piece of code oneself to acheive it.

Easy to do in the same way as I showed you.

>
> Thank you for your time and help!
>
> Regards,
> Sergey
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 12:44, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>> On Wed, 21 Jan 2009, Sergey Goriatchev wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Gabor,
>>>
>>> Thanks for that!
>>> Still, it is not really similar to how EDATE works.
>>> With julian(Sys.Date(), Sys.Date() - 10)  one moves 10 days back.
>>> The problem is that I need to move by months, not by days, as months
>>> have different number of days.
>>> I need to come to the same day when I move backward or forward in
>>> time, for example going back one month from today (21.01.2009) I need
>>> to come to 21.12.2008.
>>> I've read through your article in RNews 4/1 but still do not know how
>>> to do what I need to do.
>>
>> The trick is to use the POSIXlt class.  E.g.
>>
>>> x <- Sys.Date()
>>> xx <- as.POSIXlt(x)
>>> xx$mon <- xx$mon - 6
>>> as.Date(xx)
>>
>> [1] "2008-07-21"
>>
>> Now, the issue is what date is 6 months before 2008-08-31, and I'll leave
>> you to ponder what that means.
>>
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Sergey
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:44, Gabor Grothendieck
>>> <ggrothendieck at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> See ?julian
>>>>
>>>>> julian(Sys.Date(), Sys.Date() - 10) # 10
>>>>
>>>> [1] 10
>>>> attr(,"origin")
>>>> [1] "2009-01-11"
>>>>
>>>> and R News 4/1.
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 4:37 AM, Sergey Goriatchev <sergeyg at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hello, everyone
>>>>>
>>>>> I wonder if R has something similar to Excel function
>>>>> EDATE(start_date; months) which returns a serial number of the date
>>>>> that is the indicated number of months before of after the start date.
>>>>> Example (the second column EDATE(first_column; -6)):
>>>>> 01.01.1999      01.07.1998
>>>>> 02.02.1999      02.08.1998
>>>>> 06.03.1999      06.09.1998
>>>>>
>>>>> I am working with a zoo object where the row names are dates and for
>>>>> particular rows I need to find values that were recorded 6 months
>>>>> before (or return NA if the date is before the timeseries start).
>>>>>
>>>>> Maybe someone knows a passable R function for that kind of operation?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks in advance for help!
>>>>>
>>>>> Best,
>>>>> Sergey
>>>>>
>>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>>>>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> I'm not young enough to know everything. /Oscar Wilde
>>> Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing. /Oscar Wilde
>>> When you are finished changing, you're finished. /Benjamin Franklin
>>> Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.
>>> /Benjamin Franklin
>>> Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. /George Patten
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>>
>>
>> --
>> 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
>>
>
>
>
> --
> I'm not young enough to know everything. /Oscar Wilde
> Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing. /Oscar Wilde
> When you are finished changing, you're finished. /Benjamin Franklin
> Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.
> /Benjamin Franklin
> Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. /George Patten
>

-- 
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