?list has a little bit of information. As far as I know, historically,
the more inefficient one (pairlist()) came first, where R inherits its
structure and implementation from LISP ; list() came later as a new
implementation of a list-like object which is more efficient and faster
in various manner (e.g. addressing the (n)th elements in the middle,
and overall storage size). So these days most list-like stuff within R
is done as list()'s rather than pairlist()'s.
Internally, a pairlist() in R is implemented as a recursive binary
tree (LISTSXP), where one branch of the first node consists of the
first elements, its
attributes, and the other branch consists of a daughter node which
consists of the 2nd element as its one branch, etc. Walking such a tree
is slow and its storage requirement is a bit larger than list().
Internally, a list() in R is a VECSXP, which is a one-dimensional
structure, plus some attributes storing the names of the elements, etc.
It is a bit more efficient in terms of storage (a 1-D structure vs a
recursive binary tree), and also in random addressing of its elements -
e.g. you can jump to the (n)th element without walking the 1st to the
(n-1)th elements.
This is my understanding, no doubt the R core team has more and better
way to say about this.
a list() is not of class vector (despite the implementation in C being a
VECSXP) - a vector in R is a 1-D structure where all the elements are of
the same type/mode, which a list() is not.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hi,
>
> ?pairlist gives no explanation about what exactly is the difference
> between a pairlist and a list (except that a pairlist of length 0
> is 'NULL'). So, what's a pairlist?
>
> class(.Options)
> [1] "pairlist"
>
> Some strange things about the "pairlist" type:
>
> > showClass("pairlist")
> Error in getClass(Class) : "pairlist" is not a defined class
>
> Why the above doesn't work? It works for "list":
>
> > showClass("list")
>
> No Slots, prototype of class "list"
>
> Extends: "vector"
>
> > is.list(.Options)
> [1] TRUE
>
> > is.vector(.Options)
> [1] FALSE
>
> This doesn't make sense! If 'x' is a list, then it should be considered
> a vector too.
>
> Subsetting a pairlist with [] doesn't produce a pairlist:
>
> > class(.Options[1:3])
> [1] "list"
>
> Yes, this one is documented, but still...
>
>
> Cheers,
> H.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
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