Working with Dates in R
Dates play a crucial role in data analysis, and figuring out the time difference between two dates is a typical job. Calculating the number of days between two dates in R is simple owing to built-in functions and date manipulation packages. In this post, we’ll look at many methods for calculating the number of days between two dates in R.
Example:
Input:
Date_1 = 2020/03/21
Date_2 = 2020/03/22
Output: 1
Explanation:In Date_1 and Date_2 have only one day difference. So output will be 1.
Here we will use the seq() function to get the result. This function is used to create a sequence of elements in a Vector. To get the number of days length() function is employed with seq() as an argument.
Syntax: length(seq(from=date_1, to=date_2, by=’day’)) -1
Parameter:
- seq is function generates a sequence of numbers.
- from is starting date.
- to is ending date.
- by is step, increment.
Method 1: Using the seq() function
R
# creating date_1 variable # and storing date in it. date_1<- as.Date ( "2020-10-10" ) # creating date_2 variable # and storing date in it. date_2<- as.Date ( "2020-10-11" ) . a = seq (from = date_1, to = date_2, by = 'day' ) # Here we are finding length of # a and we are subtracting 1 because # we dont need to include current day. length (a)-1 |
Output:
[1] 1
Method 2: Using subtraction
R
# Example dates date1 <- as.Date ( "2023-07-15" ) date2 <- as.Date ( "2023-07-31" ) # Calculate the difference in days using subtraction num_days <- date2 - date1 # Print the result print (num_days) |
Output:
Time difference of 16 days
Method 3: Using difftime()
function
R
# Example dates date1 <- as.Date ( "2023-07-15" ) date2 <- as.Date ( "2023-07-31" ) # Calculate the difference in days using difftime() days_diff <- difftime (date2, date1, units = "days" ) # Extract the number of days as numeric value num_days <- as.numeric (days_diff) # Print the result print (num_days) |
Output:
[1] 16
Method 4: Using bizdays package in R
R
calendar <- create.calendar ( 'my_calendar' ) bizdays (from = '2022-01-01' , to = '2022-01-31' , cal = business_calendar) |
Output:
[1] 30
How to calculate number of days between two dates in R ?
In this article, we will discuss how to Find the number of days between two dates in the R programming language.