Review/Document how pointblank handles date variables

[hfrick]

I stubbed my toes on how pointblank handles POSIXct columns (#640). That behavior also surprised Katie (https://github.com/rstudio/pointblank/pull/642/files/6b0bd4a66c50c8d306d50a78a7394cc6ad740196#r2301782280).

I'm opening this issue as a place to collect examples where there was a mismatch between expectation and actual behavior so that we can review if we want to change anything or instead document that in a separate little how-to article to increase visibility?

The reprex is a mash-up of my own and Katie's surprise wrt POSIXct.

library(pointblank)

# define a date column as POSIXct
sales <- dplyr::tibble(
  amount = c(100, 200, 300),
  customer_name = c("Alice", "Bianca", "Charlie"),
  sale_date = as.POSIXct(c("2023-01-01", "2023-01-02", "2023-01-03"))
)

# define schema with POSIXct
schema <- col_schema(
  amount = "numeric",
  customer_name = "character",
  sale_date = "POSIXct"
)

agent <- create_agent(sales, actions = action_levels(stop_at = 1)) |> 
  col_schema_match(schema) |> 
  interrogate(progress = TRUE)
#> 
#> ── Interrogation Started - there is a single validation step ───────────────────
#> ✖ Step 1: STOP condition met.
#> 
#> ── Interrogation Completed ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
xlist <- get_agent_x_list(agent)

# the validation step fails
xlist$n
#> [1] 1
xlist$n_failed
#> [1] 1

# because the `sale_date` column has two classes while the schema only specifies one
class(sales$sale_date)
#> [1] "POSIXct" "POSIXt"

# however, the x_list also only lists one class for `sale_date`
xlist$col_types[xlist$col_names == "sale_date"]
#> [1] "POSIXct"

^{Created on 2025-10-15 with reprex v2.1.1}