unit argument of distance is not working properly.

[LuisLauM]

I have discovered that the argument unit of distance function works well only in certain specific situations.

My data:

df <- data.frame(Lat = c(42.1234, 41.0192, 40.9988, 51.0175, 50.6523, 50.9214), 
                 Lon = c(26.5462, 25.9967, 27.0001, 31.1542, 31.8924, 32.1025))

Example 1: Good behavior.

distance(x = as.matrix(df[,c("Lon", "Lat")]), lonlat = TRUE, unit = "m")
distance(x = as.matrix(df[,c("Lon", "Lat")]), lonlat = TRUE, unit = "km")

Example 2: Bad behavior.

distance(x = as.matrix(df), y = as.matrix(df), lonlat = TRUE, unit = "m")
distance(x = as.matrix(df), y = as.matrix(df), lonlat = TRUE, unit = "km")

I think it requires an urgent patch because it is an invisible issue that could not be noticed.

My platform:
OS: Windows 10
RStudio 2024.04.2 Build 764
R 4.4.0
terra 1.7-78

[rhijmans]

Thank you. I now get:

distance(x = as.matrix(df), y = as.matrix(df), lonlat = TRUE, unit = "km")
#          [,1]      [,2]      [,3]      [,4]       [,5]       [,6]
#[1,]    0.0000  125.9805  122.6313 1006.4391 1018.61992 1052.68131
#[2,]  125.9805    0.0000  111.1910 1132.1578 1143.24154 1177.20483
#[3,]  122.6313  111.1910    0.0000 1078.0487 1081.50932 1114.86600
#[4,] 1006.4391 1132.1578 1078.0487    0.0000   88.89660  105.54234
#[5,] 1018.6199 1143.2415 1081.5093   88.8966    0.00000   34.48749
#[6,] 1052.6813 1177.2048 1114.8660  105.5423   34.48749    0.00000