as.difftime() from string

Question

The result of the following instruction:

as.difftime("5 11:04:36", "%d %H:%M:%S", units =("mins"))

is

Time difference of -7975.4 mins

It seems that this function is calculating the time difference between Sys.Time() and the given value. I actually need an object to store a time span value extracted from a string (). Am I using the wrong function or is it not the right way of using it?

Answer 1

Look into lubridate

I think you want something like Duration-class, Period-class, or Timespan-class

# Duration
dur <- duration(hours = 10, minutes = 6)
# [1] "36360s (~10.1 hours)"

# Period
per <- period(hours = 10, minutes = 6)
# [1] "10H 6M 0S"