How to calculate number of days between two dates in R ?

In this article, we will discuss how to Find the number of days between two dates in the R programming language. 

Working with Dates in R

Dates play a crucial role in data analysis, and figuring out the time difference between two dates is a typical job. Calculating the number of days between two dates in R is simple owing to built-in functions and date manipulation packages. In this post, we’ll look at many methods for calculating the number of days between two dates in R.

Example:

Input:
 Date_1 = 2020/03/21
 Date_2 = 2020/03/22

Output: 1

Explanation:In Date_1 and Date_2 have only one day difference. So output will be 1.

Here we will use the seq() function to get the result. This function is used to create a sequence of elements in a Vector. To get the number of days length() function is employed with seq() as an argument.

Syntax: length(seq(from=date_1, to=date_2, by=’day’)) -1

Parameter:

• seq is function generates a sequence of numbers.
• from is starting date.
• to is ending date.
• by is step, increment.

Method 1: Using the seq() function

R

# creating date_1 variable
# and storing date in it.
date_1<-as.Date("2020-10-10")

# creating date_2 variable
# and storing date in it.
date_2<-as.Date("2020-10-11")
.
a = seq(from = date_1, to = date_2, by = 'day')

# Here we are finding length of
# a and we are subtracting 1 because
# we dont need to include current day.
length(a)-1

Output:

[1] 1

Method 2: Using subtraction

R

# Example dates
date1 <- as.Date("2023-07-15")
date2 <- as.Date("2023-07-31")

# Calculate the difference in days using subtraction
num_days <- date2 - date1

# Print the result
print(num_days)

Output:

Time difference of 16 days

Method 3: Using difftime() function

R

# Example dates
date1 <- as.Date("2023-07-15")
date2 <- as.Date("2023-07-31")

# Calculate the difference in days using difftime()
days_diff <- difftime(date2, date1, units = "days")

# Extract the number of days as numeric value
num_days <- as.numeric(days_diff)

# Print the result
print(num_days)

Output:

[1] 16

Method 4: Using bizdays package in R

R

calendar <- create.calendar('my_calendar')

bizdays(from = '2022-01-01', to = '2022-01-31', cal = business_calendar)

Output:

[1] 30