In data frames, multiple time series will be stored in a 'long' format. tsbox
detects a value, a time and zero to several id columns. Column
detection is done in the following order:
Starting on the right, the first first numeric or integer column
is used as value column.
Using the remaining columns, and starting on the right again, the first
Date, POSIXct, numeric or character column is used as
time column. character strings are parsed by anytime::anytime().
The time stamp, time, indicates the beginning of a period.
All remaining columns are id columns. Each unique combination of
id columns points to a time series.
Alternatively, the time column and the value column to be
explicitly named as time and value. If explicit names are used, the
column order will be ignored.
Whenever possible, tsbox relies on heuristic time conversion. When a
monthly "ts" time series, e.g., AirPassengers, is converted to a data
frame, each time stamp (of class "Date") is the first day of the month. In
most circumstances, this reflects the actual meaning of the data stored in a
"ts" object. Technically, of course, this is not correct: "ts" objects
divide time in period of equal length, while in reality, February is shorter
than January. Heuristic conversion is done for frequencies of 0.1 (decades),
1 (years), 4 (quarters) and 12 (month).
For other frequencies, e.g. 260, of EuStockMarkets, tsbox uses exact
time conversion. The year is divided into 260 equally long units, and time
stamp of a period will be a point in time (of class "POSIXct").