I am using the function ifelse() to manipulate a date vector. I expected the result to be of class Date, and was surprised to get a numeric vector instead. Here is an example:
dates <- as.Date(c('2011-01-01', '2011-01-02', '2011-01-03', '2011-01-04', '2011-01-05'))
dates <- ifelse(dates == '2011-01-01', dates - 1, dates)
str(dates)
This is especially surprising because performing the operation across the entire vector returns a Date object.
dates <- as.Date(c('2011-01-01', '2011-01-02', '2011-01-03', '2011-01-04','2011-01-05'))
dates <- dates - 1
str(dates)
Should I be using some other function to operate on Date vectors? If so, what function? If not, how do I force ifelse to return a vector of the same type as the input?
The help page for ifelse indicates that this is a feature, not a bug, but I’m still struggling to find an explanation for what I found to be surprising behavior.
