Table of Contents
Adding days to a date in R is a simple process utilizing the lubridate package. First, you need to create the date object and then use the `days()` function from lubridate to add the desired number of days. An example of this would be `date + days(3)` to add three days to the date. Additionally, the `difftime()` function can be used to calculate the difference between two dates. All of these functions allow for the easy manipulation of dates in R.
You can use one of the following methods to add a certain number of days to a date in R:
Method 1: Use Base R
#create new column that adds 5 days to date column df$date_plus5 <- as.Date(df$date) + 5
Method 2: Use lubridate Package
library(lubridate) #create new column that adds 5 days to date column df$date_plus5 <- ymd(df$date) + days(5)
The following examples show how to use each method with the following data frame:
#create data frame df <- data.frame(date=c('2022-01-03', '2022-02-15', '2022-05-09', '2022-08-10', '2022-10-14', '2022-12-30'), sales=c(130, 98, 120, 88, 94, 100)) #view data frame df date sales 1 2022-01-03 130 2 2022-02-15 98 3 2022-05-09 120 4 2022-08-10 88 5 2022-10-14 94 6 2022-12-30 100
Note: To subtract days from a date, simply change the addition sign to a subtraction sign in either of the formulas above.
Example 1: Add Days to Date Using Base R
The following code shows how to create a new column called date_plus5 that adds five days to each of the dates in the date column:
#create new column that adds 5 days to date column
df$date_plus5 <- as.Date(df$date) + 5
#view updated data frame
df
date sales date_plus5
1 2022-01-03 130 2022-01-08
2 2022-02-15 98 2022-02-20
3 2022-05-09 120 2022-05-14
4 2022-08-10 88 2022-08-15
5 2022-10-14 94 2022-10-19
6 2022-12-30 100 2023-01-04
Notice that the values in the new date_plus5 column are equal to the values in the date column with five days added to them.
We can also use the class() function to confirm that the new column is in a date format:
#display class of date_plus5 column
class(df$date_plus5)
[1] "Date"
Example 2: Add Days to Date Using lubridate Package
The following code shows how to use the ymd() and days() functions from the lubridate package to create a new column called date_plus5 that adds five days to each of the dates in the date column:
library(lubridate)
#create new column that adds 5 days to date column
df$date_plus5 <- ymd(df$date) + days(5)
#view updated data frame
df
date sales date_plus5
1 2022-01-03 130 2022-01-08
2 2022-02-15 98 2022-02-20
3 2022-05-09 120 2022-05-14
4 2022-08-10 88 2022-08-15
5 2022-10-14 94 2022-10-19
6 2022-12-30 100 2023-01-04
Note: The ymd() function tells the lubridate package that the values in the date column are currently in a year-month-date format.
Refer to the lubridate for more date formatting options.
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in R: