[R] Semantics of sequences in R

[Duncan Murdoch]

I think this was posted to the wrong list, so my followup is going to 
R-devel.

On 22/02/2009 3:42 PM, Stavros Macrakis wrote:
> Inspired by the exchange between Rolf Turner and Wacek Kusnierczyk, I
> thought I'd clear up for myself the exact relationship among the
> various sequence concepts in R, including not only generic vectors
> (lists) and atomic vectors, but also pairlists, factor sequences,
> date/time sequences, and difftime sequences.
> 
> I tabulated type of sequence vs. property to see if I could make sense
> of all this.  The properties I looked at were the predicates
> is.{vector,list,pairlist}; whether various sequence operations (c,
> rev, unique, sort, rle) can be used on objects of the various types,
> and if relevant, whether they preserve the type of the input; and what
> the length of class( as.XXX (1:2) ) is.
> 
> Here are the results (code to reproduce at end of email):
> 
>              numer list  plist fact  POSIXct difft
> is.vector    TRUE  TRUE  FALSE FALSE FALSE   FALSE
> is.list      FALSE TRUE  TRUE  FALSE FALSE   FALSE
> is.pairlist  FALSE FALSE TRUE  FALSE FALSE   FALSE
> c_keep?      TRUE  TRUE  FALSE FALSE TRUE    FALSE
> rev_keep?    TRUE  TRUE  FALSE TRUE  TRUE    TRUE
> unique_keep? TRUE  TRUE  "Err" TRUE  TRUE    FALSE
> sort_keep?   TRUE  "Err" "Err" TRUE  TRUE    TRUE
> rle_len      2     "Err" "Err" "Err" "Err"   "Err"
> 
> Alas, this tabulation, rather than clarifying things for me, just
> confused me more -- the diverse treatment of sequences by various
> operations is all rather bewildering.

But you are asking lots of different questions, so of course you should 
get different answers.  For example, the first three rows are behaving 
exactly as documented.  (Perhaps the functions should have been designed 
differently, but a pretty-looking matrix isn't an argument for that. 
Give some examples of how the documented behaviour is causing problems.)

I think some of the operations in the later rows are undocumented 
(generally pairlists tend not to be documented, even if in some cases 
they are supported), and it might make sense to make them more 
consistent in the undocumented cases.  But it may make more sense to 
completely hide pairlists, for instance, and then several more of the 
examples are behaving as documented.  (BTW, your description of your 
last row doesn't match what you did, as far as I can see.)

> Wouldn't it be easier to teach, learn, and use R if there were more
> consistency in the treatment of sequences?  

Which ones in particular should change?  What should they change to? 
What will break when you do that?

 > I understand that in
> long-running projects like S/R, there is an accumulation of
> contributions by a variety of authors, but perhaps the time has come
> for some cleanup at least for the base library?

Generally R core members are reluctant to take on work just because 
someone else thinks it would be nice if they did.  If you want to do 
this, that's one thing, but if you are just saying that it would be nice 
if someone else did it, then it's much less likely to get done.  To get 
someone else to do it you need to convince them that it's a valuable use 
of their time, and I don't see that yet.

Duncan Murdoch