Fix a bug in extract_fin_year() to make sure financial years are displayed correctly from 1999/20 to 2008/09.

A new article has been added to the documentation - Working with CHI numbers.

The {gdata} import has been dropped and replaced with {scales}.

extract_fin_year() is now much faster and will use less memory, especially for smaller vectors (1 to 1,000).

format_postcode() is now faster and also gains a quiet parameter, the default value is FALSE but setting it to TRUE will skip some of the checks and messages, this is useful when using format_postcode() to 'clean-up' and format a vector of postcodes, rather than wanting to check them. Because of the skipped checks quiet = TRUE should also run faster.

The installation instructions in the README have been updated.

Improve chi_check() function to make it more efficient and run faster.

Improve "Using phsmethods" section in readme to be shorter and more accessible.

Update all errors, warnings and messages to use the cli package.

Improve errors when giving incorrect types to some functions(#86, @Moohan).

Three functions renamed to improve code clarity: postcode() to format_postcode(); age_group() to create_age_groups(); fin_year() to extract_fin_year(). The old functions will still work but will produce a warning. After a reasonable amount of time they will be removed completely.

New functions added: age_calculate()(#65, @Nic-chr); dob_from_chi()(#42, @Moohan); and age_from_chi()(#42, @Moohan)

Change the output for chi_check so that empty string ("") reports as missing (#76)

New functions added: age_group()(#23, @chrisdeans); chi_check()(#30, @graemegowans); chi_pad()(#30, @graemegowans); and match_area()(#13, @jvillacampa).

The first argument of postcode() is now x, as opposed to string. This is unlikely to break much, if any, existing code. postcode() is also now slightly faster.

phsmethods no longer imports stringi.

phsmethods now depends on a version of R >= 2.10.

Jack Hannah is no longer a maintainer.

file_size(), fin_year(), qtr(), qtr_end(), qtr_next() and qtr_prev() now use inherits(x, "y") instead of class(x) == "y" to check class. The reasoning is explained in this blogpost by Martin Maechler.

The performance of fin_year() has been improved. The function now extracts the unique date(s) from the input, calculates the associated financial year(s), and joins to the original input. This is in contrast with the original method, which directly calculated the financial year of all input dates individually.