Add and subtract months to a date without exceeding the last day of the new month

Source: R/ops-m+.r

Adding months frustrates basic arithmetic because consecutive months have different lengths. With other elements, it is helpful for arithmetic to perform automatic roll over. For example, 12:00:00 + 61 seconds becomes 12:01:01. However, people often prefer that this behavior NOT occur with months. For example, we sometimes want January 31 + 1 month = February 28 and not March 3. %m+% performs this type of arithmetic. Date %m+% months(n) always returns a date in the nth month after Date. If the new date would usually spill over into the n + 1th month, %m+% will return the last day of the nth month (rollback()). Date %m-% months(n) always returns a date in the nth month before Date.

e1 %m+% e2

add_with_rollback(e1, e2, roll_to_first = FALSE, preserve_hms = TRUE)

Arguments

e1

A period or a date-time object of class POSIXlt, POSIXct or Date.
e2

A period or a date-time object of class POSIXlt, POSIXct or Date. Note that one of e1 and e2 must be a period and the other a date-time object.
roll_to_first

rollback to the first day of the month instead of the last day of the previous month (passed to rollback())
preserve_hms

retains the same hour, minute, and second information? If FALSE, the new date will be at 00:00:00 (passed to rollback())

Value

A date-time object of class POSIXlt, POSIXct or Date

Details

%m+% and %m-% handle periods with components less than a month by first adding/subtracting months and then performing usual arithmetics with smaller units.

%m+% and %m-% should be used with caution as they are not one-to-one operations and results for either will be sensitive to the order of operations.

Examples

jan <- ymd_hms("2010-01-31 03:04:05")
jan + months(1:3) # Feb 31 and April 31 returned as NA

#> [1] NA                        "2010-03-31 03:04:05 UTC"
#> [3] NA                       
# NA "2010-03-31 03:04:05 UTC" NA
jan %m+% months(1:3) # No rollover

#> [1] "2010-02-28 03:04:05 UTC" "2010-03-31 03:04:05 UTC"
#> [3] "2010-04-30 03:04:05 UTC"

leap <- ymd("2012-02-29")
"2012-02-29 UTC"

#> [1] "2012-02-29 UTC"
leap %m+% years(1)

#> [1] "2013-02-28"
leap %m+% years(-1)

#> [1] "2011-02-28"
leap %m-% years(1)

#> [1] "2011-02-28"

x <- ymd_hms("2019-01-29 01:02:03")
add_with_rollback(x, months(1))

#> [1] "2019-02-28 01:02:03 UTC"
add_with_rollback(x, months(1), preserve_hms = FALSE)

#> [1] "2019-02-28 UTC"
add_with_rollback(x, months(1), roll_to_first = TRUE)

#> [1] "2019-03-01 01:02:03 UTC"
add_with_rollback(x, months(1), roll_to_first = TRUE, preserve_hms = FALSE)

#> [1] "2019-03-01 UTC"