R: Construct a duration

duration-helper {clock} | R Documentation

## Construct a duration

### Description

These helpers construct durations of the specified precision. Durations represent units of time.

Durations are separated into two categories:

Calendrical

- year

- quarter

- month

Chronological

- week

- day

- hour

- minute

- second

- millisecond

- microsecond

- nanosecond

Calendrical durations are generally used when manipulating calendar types, like year-month-day. Chronological durations are generally used when working with time points, like sys-time or naive-time.

### Usage

    duration_years(n = integer())

    duration_quarters(n = integer())

    duration_months(n = integer())

    duration_weeks(n = integer())

    duration_days(n = integer())

    duration_hours(n = integer())

    duration_minutes(n = integer())

    duration_seconds(n = integer())

    duration_milliseconds(n = integer())

    duration_microseconds(n = integer())

    duration_nanoseconds(n = integer())

### Arguments

`n` | `[integer]` The number of units of time to use when creating the duration.

### Value

A duration of the specified precision.

### Internal Representation

Durations are internally represented as an integer number of "ticks" along with a ratio describing how it converts to a number of seconds. The following duration ratios are used in clock:

- `1 year == 31556952 seconds`

- `1 quarter == 7889238 seconds`

- `1 month == 2629746 seconds`

- `1 week == 604800 seconds`

- `1 day == 86400 seconds`

- `1 hour == 3600 seconds`

- `1 minute == 60 seconds`

- `1 second == 1 second`

- `1 millisecond == 1 / 1000 seconds`

- `1 microsecond == 1 / 1000000 seconds`

- `1 nanosecond == 1 / 1000000000 seconds`

A duration of 1 year is defined to correspond to the average length of a proleptic Gregorian year, i.e. 365.2425 days.

A duration of 1 month is defined as exactly 1/12 of a year.

A duration of 1 quarter is defined as exactly 1/4 of a year.

A duration of 1 week is defined as exactly 7 days.

These conversions come into play when doing operations like adding or flooring durations. Generally, you add two calendrical durations together to get a new calendrical duration, rather than adding a calendrical and a chronological duration together. The one exception is `duration_cast()`, which can cast durations to any other precision, with a potential loss of information.

### Examples

    duration_years(1:5)
    duration_nanoseconds(1:5)

[Package clock version 0.6.0 Index]