>>>>> Suharto Anggono Suharto Anggono via R-devel <r-devel@r-project.org> >>>>> on Fri, 2 Sep 2016 16:10:00 +0000 writes:
> I am basically fine with the change. > How about using just the following? > if(!is.character(exclude)) > exclude <- as.vector(exclude, typeof(x)) # may result in NA > x <- as.character(x) > It looks simpler and is, more or less, equivalent. yes, but the current code should be slightly faster.. > In factor.Rd, in description of argument 'exclude', "(when \code{x} is a \code{factor} already)" can be removed. > A larger change that, I think, is reasonable is entirely removing the code > exclude <- as.vector(exclude, typeof(x)) # may result in NA > The explicit coercion of 'exclude' is not necessary. > Function 'factor' works without it. > The coercion of 'exclude' may lead to a surprise because it "may result in NA". > Example from https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2005-April/069053.html : > factor(as.integer(c(1,2,3,3,NA)), exclude=NaN) > excludes NA. > As a bonus, without the coercion of 'exclude', 'exclude' can be a factor if 'x' is a factor. This part of an example in https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2011-April/276274.html works. > cc <- c("x","y","NA") > ff <- factor(cc) > factor(ff,exclude=ff[3]) Yes, two good reasons for a change. factor() would finally behave according to the documentation which has been mentioning that 'exclude' could be a factor: ((Until my R-devel changes of a few weeks ago, i.e. at least in all recent released versions of R)), the help page for factor has said || If 'exclude' is used it should either be a factor with the same || level set as 'x' or a set of codes for the levels to be excluded. > However, the coercion of 'exclude' has been in function 'factor' in R "forever". Indeed: On March 6, 1998, svn rev. 845, when the R source files got a '.R' appended, and quite a long time before R 1.0.0, the factor function was as short as (but using an .Internal(.) !) function (x, levels = sort(unique(x), na.last = TRUE), labels, exclude = NA, ordered = FALSE) { if (length(x) == 0) return(character(0)) exclude <- as.vector(exclude, typeof(x)) levels <- levels[is.na(match(levels, exclude))] x <- .Internal(factor(match(x, levels), length(levels), ordered)) if (missing(labels)) levels(x) <- levels else levels(x) <- labels x } and already contained that line. Nevertheless, simplifying factor() by removing that line (or those 2 lines, now!) seems to only have advantages.... I'm not yet committing to anything, but currently would strongly consider it .. though *after* the '<length-1-array> OP <non-array>' issue has settled a bit. Martin > -------------------------------------------- > On Wed, 31/8/16, Martin Maechler <maech...@stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote: > Subject: Re: [Rd] 'droplevels' inappropriate change > Cc: "Martin Maechler" <maech...@stat.math.ethz.ch> > Date: Wednesday, 31 August, 2016, 2:51 PM >>>>> Martin Maechler <maech...@stat.math.ethz.ch> >>>>> on Sat, 27 Aug 2016 18:55:37 +0200 writes: >>>>> Suharto Anggono Suharto Anggono via R-devel <r-devel@r-project.org> >>>>> on Sat, 27 Aug 2016 03:17:32 +0000 writes: >>> In R devel r71157, 'droplevels' documentation, in "Arguments" section, says this about argument 'exclude'. >>> passed to factor(); factor levels which should be excluded from the result even if present. Note that this was implicitly NA in R <= 3.3.1 which did drop NA levels even when present in x, contrary to the documentation. The current default is compatible with x[ , drop=FALSE]. >>> The part >>> x[ , drop=FALSE] >>> should be >>> x[ , drop=TRUE] > [[elided Yahoo spam]] >> a "typo" by me. .. fixed now. >>> Saying that 'exclude' is factor levels is not quite true for NA element. NA may be not an original level, but NA in 'exclude' affects the result. >>> For a factor 'x', factor(x, exclude = exclude) doesn't really work for excluding in general. See, for example, https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2005-September/079336.html . >>> factor(factor(c("a","b","c")), exclude="c") >>> However, this excludes "2": >>> factor(factor(2:3), exclude=2) >>> Rather unexpectedly, this excludes NA: >>> factor(factor(c("a",NA), exclude=NULL), exclude="c") >>> For a factor 'x', factor(x, exclude = exclude) can only exclude integer-like or NA levels. An explanation is in https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2011-April/276274.html . >> Well, Peter Dalgaard (in that R-devel e-mail, a bit more than 5 >> years ago) is confirming the problem there, and suggesting (as >> you, right?) that actually `factor()` is not behaving >> correctly here. >> And your persistence is finally getting close to convince me >> that it is not just droplevels(), but factor() itself which >> needs care here. >> Interestingly, the following patch *does* pass 'make check-all' >> (after small change in tests/reg-tests-1b.R which is ok), >> and leads to behavior which is much closer to the documentation, >> notably for your two examples above would give what one would >> expect. >> (( If the R-Hub would support experiments with branches of R-devel >> from R-core members, I could just create such a branch and R Hub >> would run 'R CMD check <pkg>' for thousands of CRAN packages >> and provide a web page with the *differences* in the package >> check results ... so we could see ... )) >> I do agree that we should strongly consider such a change. > as nobody has commented, I've been liberal and have taken these > no comments as consent. > Hence I have committed > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > r71178 | maechler | 2016-08-31 09:45:40 +0200 (Wed, 31 Aug 2016) | 1 line > Changed paths: > M /trunk/doc/NEWS.Rd > M /trunk/src/library/base/R/factor.R > M /trunk/src/library/base/man/factor.Rd > M /trunk/tests/reg-tests-1b.R > M /trunk/tests/reg-tests-1c.R > factor(x, exclude) more "rational" when x or exclude are character > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > which apart from documentation, examples, and regression tests > is just the patch below. > Martin Maechler > ETH Zurich >> --- factor.R (revision 71157) >> +++ factor.R (working copy) >> @@ -28,8 +28,12 @@ >> levels <- unique(y[ind]) >> } >> force(ordered) # check if original x is an ordered factor >> - exclude <- as.vector(exclude, typeof(x)) # may result in NA >> - x <- as.character(x) >> + if(!is.character(x)) { >> + if(!is.character(exclude)) >> + exclude <- as.vector(exclude, typeof(x)) # may result in NA >> + x <- as.character(x) >> + } else >> + exclude <- as.vector(exclude, typeof(x)) # may result in NA >> ## levels could be a long vectors, but match will not handle that. >> levels <- levels[is.na(match(levels, exclude))] >> f <- match(x, levels) > Delete Reply Reply All Forward Apply > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel