Thanks to both of you. I tried to work on it, but the closest I could get was:
lifelse <- function (test, y, z) { iffy <- function(x) { if (x) {y} else {z} } lapply(test, iffy) } > lifelse(c(TRUE, FALSE), date -1, date) [[1]] [1] "2007-12-29" [[2]] [1] "2007-12-30" > > d <- as.Date(c("1994-3-4", "1996-3-1")) > lifelse(d > "1996-1-1", "1996-1-1", d) [[1]] [1] "1994-03-04" "1996-03-01" [[2]] [1] "1996-1-1" > lifelse(d <= "1996-1-1", d, "1996-1-1") [[1]] [1] "1994-03-04" "1996-03-01" [[2]] [1] "1996-1-1" Any attempts to unlist, paste, etc. to remove the list structure converted/removed the Date class. Mikkel ----- Original Message ---- From: Peter Dalgaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Gabor Grothendieck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Mikkel Grum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 1:47:26 PM Subject: Re: [R] Date formats Gabor Grothendieck wrote: > Read the warning in ?ifelse Yep. And, yes, it is annoying that ifelse() strips attributes, including class, but it is one of those things that have been in the S languages "forever", and nobody really wants to mess with. The fundamental issue is that you need the result to be able to hold values from both of the "yes" and the "no" arguments and there is no guarantee that that is possible outside of the R base types. You'd like to have things like these "work" d <- as.Date(c("1994-3-4", "1996-3-1")) ifelse(d > "1996-1-1", "1996-1-1", d) ifelse(d <= "1996-1-1", d, "1996-1-1") in the sense that the result is a Date object, but once you start thinking about the details of how it _might_ work, you find that things aren't all that simple. If there was a general mechanism for coercion between classes, then maybe it could be done, but there isn't any. -- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Ă˜ster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) FAX: (+45) 35327907 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.