as.duration changes Interval, Period and numeric class
objects to Duration objects. Numeric objects are changed
to Duration objects with the seconds unit equal to the
numeric value.
Usage
as.duration(x)
Arguments
x
Object to be coerced to a duration
Value
A duration object
Details
Durations are exact time measurements, whereas periods
are relative time measurements. See
Period-class. The length of a period
depends on when it occurs. Hence, a one to one mapping
does not exist between durations and periods. When used
with a period object, as.duration provides an inexact
estimate of the length of the period; each time unit is
assigned its most common number of seconds. A period of
one month is converted to 2628000 seconds (approximately
30.42 days). This ensures that 12 months will sum to 365
days, or one normal year. For an exact transformation,
first transform the period to an interval with
as.interval.