r - Convert Date to year month representation

Question

I have a Date, and am interested in representing it as an integer of yyyymm form. Currently, I do:

get_year_month <- function(d) { return(as.integer(format(d, "%Y%m")))}
mydate = seq.Date(from = as.Date("2012-01-01"), to = as.Date("5012-01-01"), by = 1) 
system.time(ym <- get_year_month(mydate))
#    user  system elapsed 
#    5.972   0.974   6.951 

This is very slow for large datasets. Is there a faster way? Please provide timings for your answers so they can be easily compared. Use the above example.

Answer 1

Using functions from the lubridate package can be almost twice as fast as your function :

mydate = as.Date(rep("2012-01-01",1000))
library(lubridate)
library(microbenchmark)
microbenchmark(get_year_month(mydate),
               year(mydate)*100+month(mydate))

gives :

R> Unit: milliseconds
                               expr      min       lq   median       uq
             get_year_month(mydate) 2.150296 2.188370 2.218176 2.285973
 year(mydate) * 100 + month(mydate) 1.220016 1.228129 1.239704 1.284568