Should `as.difftime()` convert integer input to double?
Forcing difftime's payload to be numeric would avoid anomalies like
as.difftime(123456789L, units="secs") * 100L
Time difference of NA secs Warning message: In e2 * unclass(e1) : NAs produced by integer overflow
as.difftime(123456789, units="secs") * 100L
Time difference of 12345678900 secs Note that there are packages (e.g., fst, a serialization package) which can (in C++ code) understand and create difftimes with integer payloads, so you may have trouble completely getting rid of such things. -Bill
On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 11:26 AM Davis Vaughan <davis at rstudio.com> wrote:
Hi all, Currently, `as.difftime()` with an integer input will produce a difftime object that internally is built on an integer vector, i.e.: x <- as.difftime(1L, units = "secs") typeof(x) #> [1] "integer" x <- as.difftime(1, units = "secs") typeof(x) #> [1] "double" I feel like difftime objects should always be built on *double* vectors. There are a few reasons I feel like this should be true: - There is an `as.double.difftime()` method, but no `as.integer.difftime()` method, which implies something about what the underlying storage type is assumed to be. - AFAIK, there is no other way to produce a difftime object with integer storage using the exposed API (aside from abusing the internal .difftime() helper). Even `.Date(1L) - .Date(1L)` produces a difftime with double storage. - `seq.Date()` used to be able to produce dates with integer storage, but as of recently even that edge case has been altered to always produce dates with double storage. So a change to also force difftime to have double storage would feel consistent with that. https://github.com/wch/r-source/commit/0762ee983813c4df9b93f6b5ee52c910dcd3ab39 It looks like a patch to `as.difftime()` would be fairly straightforward (i.e. ensuring that integer input is coerced to double), so I'd be happy to attempt one if someone else agrees that this should be changed. Thanks, Davis [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
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