as.numeric changes?

[Martin Maechler]

[another spill over from R-core
 concering the new behavior of as.numeric(.) for factors. - MM]

>>>>> "Ross" == Ross Ihaka <ihaka@stat.auckland.ac.nz> writes:

    Ross> Thomas Lumley writes:
 > On 27 Dec 1997, Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote:
 > > Thomas Lumley <thomas@biostat.washington.edu> writes:
 > > 
 > > > Now as.numeric() operates on the levels of the factor	
 > > > 	 > as.numeric(factor(c("2","3")))
 > > > 	 [1] 2 3
 > > > 	 > as.numeric(factor(c("A","B")))
 > > > 	 [1] NA NA
 > > > 
 > > > Is this new behaviour a feature? If so, we need to document it in the FAQ
 > > > and the help page.
 > > 
 > > I seem to remember that it got changed in S-plus 3.4 -> 4.0 ? I also
 > > prefer the old behavior, but perhaps codes() is better anyway?

codes(.) is now well documented.
Maybe we should add some extra like

 Note that  \code{\link{as.numeric}(f)} does \emph{not} give the same as
 \code{codes(f)}.  This is not compatible to version of Splus prior to 4.0

    >> We are entirely Unix-based here, so I haven't seen Splus 4.0. I'm
    >> happy to have the new version of as.numeric but I think it needs
    >> documentation as an incompatibility at least with Unix S(-PLUS).

    Ross> Mea culpa.  I as attempting to get rid of what I though was an S
    Ross> incompatibility and succeeded in replacing it with another.

    Ross> I'm not very happy with:

    >> as.numeric(factor(c(100, 200)))
    Ross> 	[1] 1 2

    Ross> but I can live with it. 

Ok, I've now checked it on our PC (S-plus 4.0):
This is the same as  S 4 ("L"), S-plus 3.4 and S-plus 4.0  

On the other hand,
 
	> as.numeric(factor(c("A","B")))
 	[1] NA NA

is not compatible to any version of S-plus or S 4
and I now wonder if we shouldn't go for compatibility here.

- Martin
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