date_count_between {clock}

Counting: date and date-time

Description

date_count_between() counts the number of precision units between start and end (i.e., the number of years or months or hours). This count corresponds to the whole number of units, and will never return a fractional value.

This is suitable for, say, computing the whole number of years or months between two dates, accounting for the day and time of day.

There are separate help pages for counting for dates and date-times:

• dates (Date)

• date-times (POSIXct/POSIXlt)

Usage

date_count_between(start, end, precision, ..., n = 1L)

Arguments

start, end

⁠[Date / POSIXct / POSIXlt]⁠

A pair of date or date-time vectors. These will be recycled to their common size.

precision

⁠[character(1)]⁠

A precision. Allowed precisions are dependent on the calendar used.

...

These dots are for future extensions and must be empty.

n

⁠[positive integer(1)]⁠

A single positive integer specifying a multiple of precision to use.

Value

An integer representing the number of precision units between start and end.

Comparison Direction

The computed count has the property that if start <= end, then ⁠start + <count> <= end⁠. Similarly, if start >= end, then ⁠start + <count> >= end⁠. In other words, the comparison direction between start and end will never change after adding the count to start. This makes this function useful for repeated count computations at increasingly fine precisions.

Examples

# See method specific documentation for more examples

start <- date_parse("2000-05-05")
end <- date_parse(c("2020-05-04", "2020-05-06"))

# Age in years
date_count_between(start, end, "year")

# Number of "whole" months between these dates
date_count_between(start, end, "month")