What is the difftime() function in R?

Overview

The difftime() function in R computes the difference between two objects of date or time.

Syntax

difftime(time1, time2, tz,

         units = c("auto", "secs", "mins", "hours",

                   "days", "weeks"))
Syntax for the difftime() function

Parameter value

The difftime() function takes the following parameter values:

  • time1 , time2: These are the date/time objects.
  • tz: This is an optional parameter that specifies the timezone for conversion. It is specially used for POSIXlt objects.
  • units: This is a character string that represents the unit in which the results are desired, i.e., the time difference in minutes, hours, days, etc. Abbreviations like "m," "h," or "d" can also be passed.

Return value

This function returns the difference between two objects of data/time in the specified unit.

Example

# Creating date-time objects

time1 <- "2021-02-13 19:09:24"                

time2 <- "2021-02-12 19:09:24"  



# Calling the difftime() function where our result should be in unit hours

difftime(time1, time2, units="hours")

Explanation

  • Lines 2 to 3: We create date-time objects time1 and time2.
  • Line 6: We implement the difftime() function on the date-time objects, represent our result in hours, and print the time difference.

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