Dear List,
For what I understand, strptime() simply converts from one class representation to another; i.e., from character to POSIXct/POSIXlt. One strange feature of this command running on Linux is that there are repeated calls to system time (as was revealed in a trace of system calls), which considerably affect performance. These system calls end up taking almost 75% of the execution time, and are completely unnecessary. Code: ptm <- proc.time() for (i in 1:100000) strptime("2010-03-10 17:00:00", "%F %H:%M:%S") (proc.time() -ptm) Output on Windows Box (32-bit R 2.9.1 running on Intel X5472 @ 3.0 GHz): user system elapsed 1.31 0.02 1.30 Output on Linux Box (64-bit R 2.10.1 running on Intel Xeon E5520 @ 2.27GHz): user system elapsed 3.33 8.941 12.273 Any help would be appreciated. Also, if I should turn to a different mailing list for this, please let me know. Regards, Alex [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.