Generate a sequence of the last day of the month over two years

Question

I use lubridate and figured that this would be so easy

ymd("2010-01-31")+months(0:23) 

But look what one gets. It is all messed up!

 [1] "2010-01-31 UTC" "2010-03-03 UTC" "2010-03-31 UTC" "2010-05-01 UTC" "2010-05-31 UTC" "2010-07-01 UTC" "2010-07-31 UTC" "2010-08-31 UTC" "2010-10-01 UTC" [10] "2010-10-31 UTC" "2010-12-01 UTC" "2010-12-31 UTC" "2011-01-31 UTC" "2011-03-03 UTC" "2011-03-31 UTC" "2011-05-01 UTC" "2011-05-31 UTC" "2011-07-01 UTC" [19] "2011-07-31 UTC" "2011-08-31 UTC" "2011-10-01 UTC" "2011-10-31 UTC" "2011-12-01 UTC" "2011-12-31 UTC" 

Then I read how lubridate caters to phenomenon such as interval, duration and period. So, OK I realize that a month is actually the number of days defined by (365*4+1)/48 = 30.438 days. So I tried to get smart and rewrite it as

ymd("2010-01-31")+ as.period(months(0:23)) 

But that just gave an error.

Error in as.period.default(months(0:23)) :    (list) object cannot be coerced to type 'double' 

Answer 1

Yes, you found the correct trick: going back a day from the first of the next month.

Here is as a one-liner in base R:

R> seq(as.Date("2010-02-01"), length=24, by="1 month") - 1  [1] "2010-01-31" "2010-02-28" "2010-03-31" "2010-04-30" "2010-05-31"  [6] "2010-06-30" "2010-07-31" "2010-08-31" "2010-09-30" "2010-10-31" [11] "2010-11-30" "2010-12-31" "2011-01-31" "2011-02-28" "2011-03-31" [16] "2011-04-30" "2011-05-31" "2011-06-30" "2011-07-31" "2011-08-31" [21] "2011-09-30" "2011-10-31" "2011-11-30" "2011-12-31" R>  

So no need for lubridate which (while being a fine package) isn't needed for simple task like this. Plus, its overloading of existing base functions still strikes me as somewhat dangerous...

Answer 2

It is amazing how typing out a question focuses creative energy. I think I worked out the answer. I may as well post it here for the next poor soul who finds themselves wasting time.

ymd("2010-02-01")+ months(0:23)-days(1) 

Simply specify the first day of the next month and generate a sequence from that but subtract 1 days from it to get the last day of the preceding month.

[1] "2010-01-31 UTC" "2010-02-28 UTC" "2010-03-31 UTC" "2010-04-30 UTC" "2010-05-31 UTC" "2010-06-30 UTC" "2010-07-31 UTC" "2010-08-31 UTC" "2010-09-30 UTC" [10] "2010-10-31 UTC" "2010-11-30 UTC" "2010-12-31 UTC" "2011-01-31 UTC" "2011-02-28 UTC" "2011-03-31 UTC" "2011-04-30 UTC" "2011-05-31 UTC" "2011-06-30 UTC" [19] "2011-07-31 UTC" "2011-08-31 UTC" "2011-09-30 UTC" "2011-10-31 UTC" "2011-11-30 UTC" "2011-12-31 UTC" 

By the way, how do I get rid of the pesky "UTC" designations. Time zones are a life saver when they are needed. The rest of the time they are a nuisance.