R help - Nov 2006 - Date, date, POSIX question

I have been working with R extensively for several months.  I switched 
from SAS and Matlab to R.  My question is

Can anyone explain the benefits and detractions of the 'Date' package 
verses the 'date' package and verses 'POSIX' dates.

I have noticed several other packages use one or the other.  Rmetrics 
seems to standardize on POSIX.  I can only see differences in default 
formats, and the starting counting number be it 1 1 1900 or something else.

I am trying to standardize code that I write for research and to provide 
to my students on one date schema.  The documentation is very good on 
using a specific package, but I can not tell the which one provides the 
broadest coverage across R packages or is just the better one to use.

I know all of you have more experience with some of these and I am just 
soliciting your opinions and comments.

Thank you
Joe

See the help desk article in R News 4/1 for a discussion on how to choose.

On 11/5/06, Joe W. Byers <Joe-Byers at utulsa.edu>
wrote:
> I have been working with R extensively for several months.  I switched
> from SAS and Matlab to R.  My question is
>
> Can anyone explain the benefits and detractions of the 'Date'
package
> verses the 'date' package and verses 'POSIX' dates.
>
> I have noticed several other packages use one or the other.  Rmetrics
> seems to standardize on POSIX.  I can only see differences in default
> formats, and the starting counting number be it 1 1 1900 or something else.
>
> I am trying to standardize code that I write for research and to provide
> to my students on one date schema.  The documentation is very good on
> using a specific package, but I can not tell the which one provides the
> broadest coverage across R packages or is just the better one to use.
>
> I know all of you have more experience with some of these and I am just
> soliciting your opinions and comments.
>
> Thank you
> Joe
>
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> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

Joe W. Byers <Joe-Byers <at> utulsa.edu> writes:
...
> Can anyone explain the benefits and detractions of the 'Date'
package
> verses the 'date' package and verses 'POSIX' dates.
> 
...

Not sure which one should be prefered, but there was an article in Rnews that
nicely covered pros and cons.

Gregor