Convert data.frame to xts object and preserve types

Question

Is there a way to create an xts object from a data.frame and preserve data type? My numerics are being converted to character. This post from 2009 suggests merging columns int

Answer 1

No, you can't. xts/zoo objects are a matrix with an index attribute and you can't mix types in a matrix.

We've considered creating an xts-data.frame class but a primary concern of xts is speed and memory efficiency. data.frames are not speed and memory efficient, so this hasn't been a priority.