I've moved this to R-devel...
On 5/28/2009 8:17 PM, Stavros Macrakis wrote:
I couldn't get your suggested method to work:
`==.foo` <- function(a,b) unclass(a)==unclass(b)
`>.foo` <- function(a,b) unclass(a) < unclass(b) # invert comparison
is.na.foo <- function(a)is.na(unclass(a))
sort(structure(sample(5),class="foo")) #-> 1:5 -- not reversed
What am I missing?
There are two problems. First, I didn't mention that you need a method
for indexing as well. The code needs to evaluate things like x[i] >
x[j], and by default x[i] will not be of class "foo", so the custom
comparison methods won't be called.
Second, I think there's a bug in the internal code, specifically in
do_rank or orderVector1 in sort.c: orderVector1 ignores the class of x.
do_rank pays attention when breaking ties, so I think this is an
oversight.
So I'd say two things should be done:
1. the bug should be fixed. Even if this isn't the most obvious
approach, it should work.
2. we should look for ways to make all of this simpler, e.g. allowing
a comparison function to be used.
I'll take on 1, but not 2. It's hard to work out the right place for
the comparison function to appear, and it would require a lot of work to
implement, because all of this stuff (sort, rank, order, xtfrm,
sort.int, etc.) is closely interrelated, some but not all of the
functions are S3 generics, some implemented internally, etc. In the
end, I'd guess the results won't be very satisfactory from a performance
point of view: all those calls out to R to do the comparisons are going
to be really slow.
I think your advice to use order() with multiple keys is likely to be
much faster in most instances. It's just a better approach in R.
Duncan Murdoch
-s
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murd...@stats.uwo.ca>wrote:
On 28/05/2009 5:34 PM, Steve Jaffe wrote:
Sounds simple but haven't been able to find it in docs: is it possible to
sort a vector using a user-defined comparison function? Seems it must be,
but "sort" doesn't seem to provide that option, nor does "order" sfaics
You put a class on the vector (e.g. using class(x) <- "myvector"), then
define a conversion to numeric (e.g. xtfrm.myvector) or actual comparison
methods (you'll need ==.myvector, >.myvector, and is.na.myvector).
Duncan Murdoch
______________________________________________
r-h...@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
______________________________________________
r-h...@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
______________________________________________
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
