[R] Bug in "is" ?

Barry Rowlingson b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk
Fri Sep 26 08:50:33 CEST 2008


2008/9/25 Kingsford Jones <kingsfordjones at gmail.com>:

>
> Try
>
> ?type
>
> which correctly guesses the user is looking for the 'typeof' page.
>
> Or even
>
> example(type)
>
> Also, after a brief introduction, the R Language Definition document
> begins with a discussion of types.
>
>
> Kingsford Jones
>

 But if, oh if, we could start R from scratch, would the documentation
contain such gems as:

 "value: a character string giving the desired mode or 'storage mode'
(type) of the object."

and

"""
As storage mode "single" is only a pseudo-mode in R, it will not be
reported by mode or storage.mode: use attr(object, "Csingle") to
examine this. However, mode<- can be used to set the mode to "single",
which sets the real mode to "double" and the "Csingle" attribute to
TRUE. Setting any other mode will remove this attribute.
"""

Looking at the R docs for typeof and mode it seems to refer to modes,
types, storage modes, (storage) modes, 'storage mode' (type)s, real
modes, pseudo-modes and internal types. Confused? Clearly people are!

 Barry



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