<p><div><div><div><div data-width="100" data-show-faces="false" data-send="true" data-layout="button_count" data-height="21" data-href="https://www.r-bloggers.com/anytime-0-0-1-new-package-for-anything-to-posixct-or-date/"></div></div><div><a data-url="https://www.r-bloggers.com/anytime-0-0-1-new-package-for-anything-to-posixct-or-date/" data-counturl="https://www.r-bloggers.com/anytime-0-0-1-new-package-for-anything-to-posixct-or-date/" data-count="horizontal" data-text="anytime 0.0.1: New package for ‘anything’ to POSIXct (or Date)" class="twitter-share-button" data-via="rbloggers" href="https://twitter.com/share"></a></div><div></div></div><div></div></div>
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(This article was first published on <strong><a href="http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2016/09/13#anytime_0.0.1"> Thinking inside the box </a></strong>, and kindly contributed to <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.r-bloggers.com/">R-bloggers)</a> </div>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/anytime.html">anytime</a> just arrived on <a target="_blank" href="https://cran.r-project.org/">CRAN</a> as a very first release 0.0.1.</p>
<p>So why (yet another) package dealing with dates and times? R excels at computing with dates, and times. By using <em>typed</em> representation we not only get all that functionality but also of the added safety stemming from proper representation.</p>
<p>But there is a small nuisance cost: How often have we each told <code>as.POSIXct()</code> that the origin is <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time">epoch ‘1970-01-01’</a>? Do we have to say it a million more times? Similarly, when parsing dates that are in <em>some recogniseable form</em> of the YYYYMMDD format, do we really have to manually convert from <code>integer</code> or <code>numeric</code> or <code>factor</code> or <code>ordered</code> to character first? Having one of several common separators and/or date / time month forms (YYYY-MM-DD, YYYY/MM/DD, YYYYMMDD, YYYY-mon-DD and so on, with or without times, with or without textual months and so on), do we really need a format string?</p>
<p><code>anytime()</code> aims to help as a small <em>general purpose</em> converter returning a proper <code>POSIXct</code> (or <code>Date</code>) object nomatter the input (provided it was somewhat parseable), relying on <a target="_blank" href="http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_61_0/doc/html/date_time.html">Boost date_time</a> for the (efficient, performant) conversion.</p>
<p>See some examples on the <a target="_blank" href="http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/anytime.html">anytime</a> page or the <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/eddelbuettel/anytime">GitHub README.md</a>, or in the screenshot below. And then just give it try!</p>
<p><img alt="anytime examples" src="https://i1.wp.com/dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/code/anytime/anytimeExamples.png?w=456" data-recalc-dims="1"></p>
<p>For questions or comments use the <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/eddelbuettel/anytime/issues">issue tracker</a> off the <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/eddelbuettel/anytime">GitHub repo</a>.</p>
<p>
This post by <a target="_blank" href="http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/">Dirk Eddelbuettel</a> originated on his <a target="_blank" href="http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/">Thinking inside the box</a> blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.</p>
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<p><div><div><div><div data-width="55" data-show-faces="false" data-send="true" data-layout="box_count" data-height="62" data-href="https://www.r-bloggers.com/anytime-0-0-1-new-package-for-anything-to-posixct-or-date/"></div></div><div><a data-url="https://www.r-bloggers.com/anytime-0-0-1-new-package-for-anything-to-posixct-or-date/" data-counturl="https://www.r-bloggers.com/anytime-0-0-1-new-package-for-anything-to-posixct-or-date/" data-count="vertical" data-text="anytime 0.0.1: New package for ‘anything’ to POSIXct (or Date)" class="twitter-share-button" data-via="rbloggers" href="https://twitter.com/share"></a></div><div></div></div><div></div></div>
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<div>To <strong>leave a comment</strong> for the author, please follow the link and comment on their blog: <strong><a href="http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2016/09/13#anytime_0.0.1"> Thinking inside the box </a></strong>.</div>
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