How to make an empty vector of POSIXct

Question

I want to make an empty vector of POSIXct so that I can put a POSIXct in it:

vec <- vector(\"POSIXct\", 10)
vec
vec[1] <- \"2014-         


        

Answer 1

When creating a POSIXct vector in the following way, the underlying type becomes double:

> times <- as.POSIXct(c("2015-09-18 09:01:05.984 CEST", "2015-09-18 10:01:10.984 CEST", "2015-09-18 10:21:20.584 CEST"))
> typeof(times)
[1] "double"
> values <- c(5,6,7)

Combining the above vector with an empty vector of POSIXct initialized with character as the underlying type, results in a character-POSIXct vector:

> tm1 <- c(.POSIXct(character(0)), times)
> typeof(tm1)
[1] "character"

... which cannot be plotted directly:

> ggplot() + geom_line(aes(x=tm1, y=val), data=data.frame(tm1,val))
geom_path: Each group consist of only one observation. Do you need to adjust the group aesthetic?

I therefore prefer initializing my empty POSIXct vectors with double or integer as the underlying type:

> tm2 <- c(.POSIXct(double(0)), times)
> typeof(tm2)
[1] "double"
> ggplot() + geom_line(aes(x=tm2, y=val), data=data.frame(tm2,val))

> tm3 <- c(.POSIXct(integer(0)), times)
> typeof(tm3)
[1] "double"
> ggplot() + geom_line(aes(x=tm3, y=val), data=data.frame(tm3,val))
#Same thing...

When using double, the vector is also initialized with valid dates (which might or might not be preferable):

> .POSIXct(character(10))
 [1] NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
> .POSIXct(double(10))
 [1] "1970-01-01 01:00:00 CET" "1970-01-01 01:00:00 CET" "1970-01-01 01:00:00 CET" "1970-01-01 01:00:00 CET" "1970-01-01 01:00:00 CET" "1970-01-01 01:00:00 CET"
 [7] "1970-01-01 01:00:00 CET" "1970-01-01 01:00:00 CET" "1970-01-01 01:00:00 CET" "1970-01-01 01:00:00 CET"