era 0.5.0: chronological ordering and extremes

era v0.5.0 is now available on CRAN:

install.packages("era")

This minor release adds functions for chronological ordering (yr_sort()) of year vectors:

# Forward-counting era:
x <- yr(c(200, 100, 300), "CE")
yr_earliest(x)
#> # CE years <yr[1]>:
#> [1] 100
#> # Era: Common Era (CE): Gregorian years (365.2425 days), counted forwards from 0
yr_latest(x)
#> # CE years <yr[1]>:
#> [1] 300
#> # Era: Common Era (CE): Gregorian years (365.2425 days), counted forwards from 0
yr_range(x)
#> # CE years <yr[2]>:
#> [1] 100 300
#> # Era: Common Era (CE): Gregorian years (365.2425 days), counted forwards from 0

# Backward-counting era:
y <- yr(c(200, 100, 300), "BCE")
yr_earliest(y)
#> # BCE years <yr[1]>:
#> [1] 300
#> # Era: Before Common Era (BCE): Gregorian years (365.2425 days), counted backwards from 1
yr_latest(y)
#> # BCE years <yr[1]>:
#> [1] 100
#> # Era: Before Common Era (BCE): Gregorian years (365.2425 days), counted backwards from 1
yr_range(x)
#> # CE years <yr[2]>:
#> [1] 100 300
#> # Era: Common Era (CE): Gregorian years (365.2425 days), counted forwards from 0

And for calculating their extreme values (yr_earliest(), yr_latest(), and yr_range())

# Forward-counting era:
x <- yr(c(200, 100, 300), "CE")
yr_earliest(x)
#> # CE years <yr[1]>:
#> [1] 100
#> # Era: Common Era (CE): Gregorian years (365.2425 days), counted forwards from 0
yr_latest(x)
#> # CE years <yr[1]>:
#> [1] 300
#> # Era: Common Era (CE): Gregorian years (365.2425 days), counted forwards from 0
yr_range(x)
#> # CE years <yr[2]>:
#> [1] 100 300
#> # Era: Common Era (CE): Gregorian years (365.2425 days), counted forwards from 0

# Backward-counting era:
y <- yr(c(200, 100, 300), "BCE")
yr_earliest(y)
#> # BCE years <yr[1]>:
#> [1] 300
#> # Era: Before Common Era (BCE): Gregorian years (365.2425 days), counted backwards from 1
yr_latest(y)
#> # BCE years <yr[1]>:
#> [1] 100
#> # Era: Before Common Era (BCE): Gregorian years (365.2425 days), counted backwards from 1
yr_range(x)
#> # CE years <yr[2]>:
#> [1] 100 300
#> # Era: Common Era (CE): Gregorian years (365.2425 days), counted forwards from 0

Essentially these are all wrappers for base functions (sort(), min(), max() and range()) that are aware of the directionality of the era system attached to the vector: “CE” years are counted forwards, “BCE” years are counted backwards, etc. I decided to implement them as prefixed functions instead of S3 methods for yr vectors because I didn’t want to suprise people when they used e.g. max() expecting the numerical maximum and got the chronologically latest value instead.

Links

• era on CRAN
• era package documentation
• Introductory vignette
• Source code (GitHub)