Stefan Evert wrote: > Dear vQ, > >> vectors (can-be-considered-lists), > > can you please stop repeating this nonsense? I don't think anybody > ever claimed that vectors can be considered list.
yes, it is nonsense. yes, there is one person who repeatedly made this claim. please read the archives; specifically, [1]. note this statement: "Note that any vector can be considered to be a list." [1] https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2009-February/186932.html when you're talking about nonsense, please attribute it to the right person. > It's rather the other way round: lists can also be seen as vectors to > R (possibly they are implemented as such, but I don't much about the > internals of R). not *all* lists are vectors; pairlists are not, though they are lists. > > > a <- as.list(1:10) > > b <- 1:10 > > is.vector(a) > [1] TRUE > > is.list(a) > [1] TRUE > > is.vector(b) > [1] TRUE > > is.list(b) > [1] FALSE > > Hence the confusion about > > > mode(as.vector(a)) > [1] "list" but mode(unlist(a)) # "numeric" class(unlist(a)) # integer > > which prompted the original comment that you are taking so much > exception to. which original comment? > >> as to "it could only work in very specific circumstances" -- no, it >> would work for any list whatsoever, provided the user has a correctly >> implemented comparator. for example, i'd like to sort a list of vectors >> by the vectors' length -- is this a very exotic idea? > > Honestly, I can't think of a situation where I would want to do than > in R. In a Perl script, quite likely; but this is a kind of data > manipulation that R wasn't really designed for IMHO. irrespectively of how exotic sorting lists of vectors can be in a system for the manipulation of a comprehensive range of sorts of data, having a procedure called 'sort.list' complain about being called on a list is a sure source of confusion. how much is it likely that people will want to sort complex numbers in a system where complex numbers are incomparable? best, vQ > > Not that I'd mind having sort() operate properly on lists; it just > isn't something I miss in the language. > > Best, > Stefan ______________________________________________ R-help@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.