R devel - Dec 2020 - as.POSIXct.numeric change default of origin argument

Hello all,

I would like to propose to change the default value for "origin"
argument in as.POSIXct.numeric method, from current missing to new
"1970-01-01".
My proposal is motivated by the fact that this is the most commonly
needed value for "origin" argument and having that as a default seems
reasonable.
Proposed change seems to be pretty safe because it is now an error.

Best Regards,
Jan Gorecki

The fda package already includes as.POSIXct1970, which also sets 
tz="GMT" by default.


	  I made the equivalent thing for as.Date available as 
"Ecfun::as.Date1970".


	  If the Core R team doesn't want to make the change for the existing 
functions, they might consider adding alternatives like this.  And, of 
course, Jan Gorecki and others can use these (if they aren't already 
using them or something equivalent).


	  sg


On 2020-12-06 05:04, Jan Gorecki wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I would like to propose to change the default value for "origin"
> argument in as.POSIXct.numeric method, from current missing to new
> "1970-01-01".
> My proposal is motivated by the fact that this is the most commonly
> needed value for "origin" argument and having that as a default
seems
> reasonable.
> Proposed change seems to be pretty safe because it is now an error.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Jan Gorecki
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

On Sun, 6 Dec 2020, Jan Gorecki wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I would like to propose to change the default value for "origin"
> argument in as.POSIXct.numeric method, from current missing to new
> "1970-01-01".
> My proposal is motivated by the fact that this is the most commonly
> needed value for "origin" argument and having that as a default
seems
> reasonable.
> Proposed change seems to be pretty safe because it is now an error.
I would also be in favor of this (and have been for years), mostly to make 
it consistent with the as.numeric() method. Same for "Date".

To support the latter, the "zoo" package provides a separate as.Date()
generic that enables the as.Date.numeric() with different default.

The main argument of R Core against it is that it is too uncertain whether 
the origin is really 1970-01-01, e.g., when importing from Excel or SAS.

Best wishes,
Z
> ______________________________________________
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