Efficient and accurate age calculation (in years, months, or weeks) in R given birth date and an arbitrary date

Question

I am facing the common task of calculating the age (in years, months, or weeks) given the date of birth and an arbitrary date. The thing is that quite often I have to do thi

Answer 1

Ok, so I found this function in another post:

age <- function(from, to) {
    from_lt = as.POSIXlt(from)
    to_lt = as.POSIXlt(to)

    age = to_lt$year - from_lt$year

    ifelse(to_lt$mon < from_lt$mon |
               (to_lt$mon == from_lt$mon & to_lt$mday < from_lt$mday),
           age - 1, age)
}

It was posted by @Jim saying "The following function takes a vectors of Date objects and calculates the ages, correctly accounting for leap years. Seems to be a simpler solution than any of the other answers".

It is indeed simpler and it does the trick I was looking for. On average, it is actually faster than the arithmetic method (about 75% faster).

mbm <- microbenchmark(
    arithmetic = (givendate - birthdate) / 365.25,
    lubridate = interval(start = birthdate, end = givendate) /
        duration(num = 1, units = "years"),
    eeptools = age_calc(dob = birthdate, enddate = givendate, 
                        units = "years"),
    age = age(from = birthdate, to = givendate),
    times = 1000
)
mbm
autoplot(mbm)

And at least in my examples it does not make any mistake (and it should not in any example; it's a pretty straightforward function using ifelses).

toy_df <- data.frame(
    birthdate = birthdate,
    givendate = givendate,
    arithmetic = as.numeric((givendate - birthdate) / 365.25),
    lubridate = interval(start = birthdate, end = givendate) /
        duration(num = 1, units = "years"),
    eeptools = age_calc(dob = birthdate, enddate = givendate,
                        units = "years"),
    age = age(from = birthdate, to = givendate)
)
toy_df[, 3:6] <- floor(toy_df[, 3:6])
toy_df

    birthdate  givendate arithmetic lubridate eeptools age
1  1978-12-30 2015-12-31         37        37       37  37
2  1978-12-31 2015-12-31         36        37       37  37
3  1979-01-01 2015-12-31         36        37       36  36
4  1962-12-30 2015-12-31         53        53       53  53
5  1962-12-31 2015-12-31         52        53       53  53
6  1963-01-01 2015-12-31         52        53       52  52
7  2000-06-16 2050-06-17         50        50       50  50
8  2000-06-17 2050-06-17         49        50       50  50
9  2000-06-18 2050-06-17         49        50       49  49
10 2007-03-18 2008-03-19          1         1        1   1
11 2007-03-19 2008-03-19          1         1        1   1
12 2007-03-20 2008-03-19          0         1        0   0
13 1968-02-29 2015-02-28         46        47       46  46
14 1968-02-29 2015-03-01         47        47       47  47
15 1968-02-29 2015-03-02         47        47       47  47

I do not consider it as a complete solution because I also wanted to have age in months and weeks, and this function is specific for years. I post it here anyway because it solves the problem for the age in years. I will not accept it because:

1. I would wait for @Jim to post it as an answer.
2. I will wait to see if someone else come up with a complete solution (efficient, accurate and producing age in years, months or weeks as desired).