> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org
> [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On Behalf Of James Rome
> Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 2:27 PM
> To: Don MacQueen
> Cc: r-help@r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Subtracting POSIXct data/times
>
> That fixed it. Dumb me. I had assumed that the subtraction of the raw
> POSIXcts would always give the same results.
Subtracting any given two POSIXct values does
give just one value. However, the format used
to print the values depends on the other values in the
same vector. It looks like the print routine selects
units such that the smallest item in the vector is bigger
than one of the chosen unit.
> z <- as.POSIXct("2010-06-14 20:32:02") + 10^(0:7)
> z-z[1]
Time differences in secs
[1] 0 9 99 999 9999 99999 999999
[8] 9999999
> z-mean(z[5:6])
Time differences in hours
[1] -15.2775 -15.2750 -15.2500 -15.0000 -12.5000
[6] 12.5000 262.5000 2762.5000
> z-mean(z[7:8])
Time differences in days
[1] -63.65740 -63.65729 -63.65625 -63.64583 -63.54167
[6] -62.50000 -52.08333 52.08333
This is analogous to the print routines for numbers
choosing whether or not to use scientific notation
based on the range of the data or chooosing the number
of digits to print based on the number of digits required to
approximate all values in the vector to the desired
accuracy. Once the format is chosen it is used for
all the values in the vector. E.g.,
> 111^(0:5)
[1] 1 111 12321 1367631
[5] 151807041 16850581551
> 111^(0:6)
[1] 1.000000e+00 1.110000e+02 1.232100e+04 1.367631e+06
[5] 1.518070e+08 1.685058e+10 1.870415e+12
or
> 1/c(1,2,4,8)
[1] 1.000 0.500 0.250 0.125
> 1/c(1,2,3,4)
[1] 1.0000000 0.5000000 0.3333333 0.2500000
Bill Dunlap
Spotfire, TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com
>
> Thanks,
> Jim
>
> On 6/14/10 5:22 PM, Don MacQueen wrote:
> > See the help page for the difftime() function, which will
> tell you how
> > to specify the units of the differences.
> > (when you don't specify, it chooses the units according to
> some rules)
> >
> > -Don
> >
> > At 4:24 PM -0400 6/14/10, James Rome wrote:
> >> I have two dataframe columns of POXIXct data/times that
> include seconds.
> >> I got them into this format using for example
> >> zsort$ETA <- as.POSIXct(as.character(zsort$ETA), format="%m/%d/%Y
> >> %H:%M:%S")
> >>
> >> My problem is that when I subtract the two columns, sometimes the
> >> difference is given in seconds, and sometimes it is given
> in minutes. I
> >> don't care which it is, but I need to know which one I will get.
> >>
> >> DateTime ETA
> >> 2010-05-16 02:19:56 2010-05-16 03:46:35
> >> ...
> >> Browse[1]> mins = zsort$ETA - zsort$DateTime
> >> Browse[1]> mins
> >> Time differences in hours
> >> [1] 1.444167 2.685000 3.077222 3.210278 3.248056 3.281944 3.281944
> >> 3.360278 3.360278 3.582778 4.574444 5.506111 5.857778
> 6.150278 6.150278
> >> 6.243056 6.243889 6.248056 6.248611 6.248611 6.356667
> >> attr(,"tzone")
> >>
> >> But sometimes the answer is in seconds.
> >> # make a column with the minutes before landing
> >>> zsort$MinBeforeLand = zsort$ETA - zsort$DateTime
> >>> zsort$MinBeforeLand
> >> Time differences in secs
> >> [1] -50 136 221 878 1192 2263 3296 3959 4968
> 5846 8709
> >> 11537 12198 12442 12642 15952 18273 19952 20538
> >>
> >> How do I specify the resultant units?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Jim Rome
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> R-help@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.
> >
> >
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@r-project.org mailing list
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
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