R devel - Nov 2022 - as.Date without "origin"

The new (2022-10-11 r83083 ucrt) as.Date function returns a date rather than an
error when called without "origin" specified.

# previous versions of R
as.Date(0)
# Error in as.Date.numeric(0) : 'origin' must be supplied

# new:
as.Date(0)
# [1] "1970-01-01"

This is at odds with the help file, which gives:

origin

aDateobject, or something which can be coerced byas.Date(origin, ...)to such an
object.

And:
as.Datewill accept numeric data (the number of days since an epoch),
butonlyiforiginis supplied.

The behavior described in the help file and implemented in previous versions
seems more reasonable than returning a date with an arbitrary
"origin". In any case, in the r-devel there is a mismatch between the
function and its description.

-Dan
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

I've felt that "as.Date" should default to origin
"1970-01-01", so I
added a modification to Ecfun:


Ecfun::as.Date1970(0)


	  If R-devel chose to change the default on this, I would happily 
deprecate Ecfun::as.Date1970 in favor of base::as.Date ;-)


	  I would therefore support changing the documentation to match the new 
behavior.


	  Spencer Graves


On 11/2/22 7:30 AM, Dan Dalthorp via R-devel wrote:
> The new (2022-10-11 r83083 ucrt) as.Date function returns a date rather
than an error when called without "origin" specified.
> 
> # previous versions of R
> as.Date(0)
> # Error in as.Date.numeric(0) : 'origin' must be supplied
> 
> # new:
> as.Date(0)
> # [1] "1970-01-01"
> 
> This is at odds with the help file, which gives:
> 
> origin
> 
> aDateobject, or something which can be coerced byas.Date(origin, ...)to
such an object.
> 
> And:
> as.Datewill accept numeric data (the number of days since an epoch),
butonlyiforiginis supplied.
> 
> The behavior described in the help file and implemented in previous
versions seems more reasonable than returning a date with an arbitrary
"origin". In any case, in the r-devel there is a mismatch between the
function and its description.
> 
> -Dan
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
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