Summary

Date and time objects are one of the foundations of the time series data. Thus, the ability to import, reformat, and convert this type of object in R seamlessly is an essential part of the time series analysis process. In this chapter, we introduced the primary date and time objects in R, the Date and POSIXct/POSIXlt classes, and their main attributes. Furthermore, we introduced two main approaches in R to handle and process those objects, with the base and lubridate packages. While the work with the base functions is more technical (or hardcore coding), the work with the lubridate package is based on common English language communication with the objects and therefore is much simpler to use. I personally found that deep understanding of the base package approach makes working with the lubridate package much smoother and more straightforward, as date and time objects play...