[Rd] How to handle INT8 data

[Nicolas Paris]

Right, they are identifiers.

Storing them as String has drawbacks:
- huge to store in memory
- slow to process
- huge to index (by eg data.table columns indexes)

Why not storing them as numeric ?

Thanks,

Le 20 janv. 2017 à 18h16, William Dunlap écrivait :
> If these are identifiers, store them as strings.  If not, what sort of
> calculations do you plan on doing with them?
> Bill Dunlap
> TIBCO Software
> wdunlap tibco.com
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 6:33 AM, Nicolas Paris <nicolas.paris at aphp.fr> wrote:
> > Hello r users,
> >
> > I have to deal with int8 data with R. AFAIK  R does only handle int4
> > with `as.integer` function [1]. I wonder:
> > 1. what is the better approach to handle int8 ? `as.character` ?
> > `as.numeric` ?
> > 2. is there any plan to handle int8 in the future ? As you might know,
> > int4 is to small to deal with earth population right now.
> >
> > Thanks for you ideas,
> >
> > int8 eg:
> >
> >      human_id
> > ----------------------
> >  -1311071933951566764
> >  -4708675461424073238
> >  -6865005668390999818
> >   5578000650960353108
> >  -3219674686933841021
> >  -6469229889308771589
> >   -606871692563545028
> >  -8199987422425699249
> >   -463287495999648233
> >   7675955260644241951
> >
> > reference:
> > 1. https://www.r-bloggers.com/r-in-a-64-bit-world/
> >
> > --
> > Nicolas PARIS
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

-- 
Nicolas PARIS
Responsable R & D
WIND - PACTE, Hôpital Rothschild ( RTH )
Courriel : nicolas.paris at aphp.fr
Tel : 01 48 04 21 07