class_mduration: A flexible duration class for messy durations

In messydates: A Flexible Class for Messy Dates

A flexible duration class for messy durations

Description

Most R packages handle duration and periods as exact time or date intervals. However, this is not possible for 'messy' dates where uncertainty or approximation might be present. The mduration class accounts for uncertainty and approximation in mdate objects to return their duration as a range of possible dates.

Non-range values (a single date, or a range collapsed to a single value) are returned unchanged. When both ends of the range carry a time of day, approx_range is still interpreted as a number of days, but the returned range keeps sub-day precision (e.g. "2010-01-01 09:00..2010-01-01 17:00").

Usage

new_messyduration(x = character())

validate_messyduration(x, approx_range = 0)

make_messyduration(x, approx_range = 0)

## S3 method for class 'character'
make_messyduration(x, approx_range = 0)

## S3 method for class 'mdate'
make_messyduration(x, approx_range = 0)

## S3 method for class 'mduration'
print(x, ...)

Arguments

x	An mdate variable with ranges.
approx_range	Range to expand approximate dates, in days. If 3, for example, widens the range by 3 days on both sides, moving the start 3 days earlier and the end 3 days later; if -3, narrows the range by 3 days from both sides.
...	Additional arguments passed to str().

Value

Object of class mduration

Examples

make_messyduration(as_messydate(c("2010-01-01..2010-12-31", "2010-01..2010-12")))
# widen (or narrow) the range at both ends
make_messyduration(as_messydate("2010-06-01..2010-06-10"), approx_range = 3)
# ranges that carry a time of day keep sub-day precision
make_messyduration(as_messydate("2010-01-01 09:00..2010-01-01 17:00"))

messydates documentation built on July 17, 2026, 1:07 a.m.