Hi, I am having trouble using the ave function with a POSIXct object. For example:
x<-Sys.time()+0:9*3600 dat<-data.frame(id=rep(c('a',' b','c'),each=10),dt=rep(x,3),i=rep(1:10,3)) dat # This is what I want to do: dat$time.elapsed<-unsplit(lapply(split(dat$dt,dat$id),function(x) x-x[1]),f=dat$id) dat # The above code does the trick, but from the standpoint of simplicity, the ave function seems to be perfect for this problem: ave(dat$dt,dat$id,FUN=function(x) difftime(x,x[1])) # Above doesn't work, returns: Error in as.POSIXct.default(value) : do not know how to convert 'value' to class "POSIXct" # Same error message with this: ave(dat$dt,dat$id,FUN=function(x) x - x[1]) # But the following (using numeric data instead of POSIXct) does work: ave(dat$i,dat$id,FUN=function(x) x-x[1]) # Problem seems to be in an assignment statement with split on the lhs split(dat$dt,dat$id)<-lapply(split(dat$dt,dat$id),function(x) x-x[1]) # Because rhs works: lapply(split(dat$dt,dat$id),function(x) x-x[1]) # And this works without assignment split(dat$dt,dat$id) Does anyone have any ideas about how to get ave to work with POSIXct objects, or the cause of this (apparent) problem? I am using R v. 2.11.1. Thanks, Sasha [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ 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.