R 3.4.0 is released

Peter Dalgaard pd.mes at cbs.dk
Fri Apr 21 16:19:04 CEST 2017


The build system rolled up R-3.4.0.tar.gz (codename "You Stupid Darkness") this morning.

The list below details the changes in this release.

You can get the source code from

http://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-3/R-3.4.0.tar.gz

or wait for it to be mirrored at a CRAN site nearer to you.

Binaries for various platforms will appear in due course.


For the R Core Team,

Peter Dalgaard

These are the checksums (md5 and SHA-256) for the freshly created files, in case you wish
to check that they are uncorrupted:

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MD5 (INSTALL) = 7893f754308ca31f1ccf62055090ad7b
MD5 (NEWS) = ea102623c183b5b8ad93306db6a4f6b6
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MD5 (VERSION-INFO.dcf) = 7a8c309440689143c16e8586128523e8
MD5 (R-3/R-3.4.0.tar.gz) = 75083c23d507b9c16d5c6afbd7a827e7


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This is the relevant part of the NEWS file

CHANGES IN R 3.4.0:

 SIGNIFICANT USER-VISIBLE CHANGES:

   * (Unix-alike) The default methods for download.file() and url()
     now choose "libcurl" except for file:// URLs.  There will be
     small changes in the format and wording of messages, including in
     rare cases if an issue is a warning or an error.  For example,
     when HTTP re-direction occurs, some messages refer to the final
     URL rather than the specified one.

     Those who use proxies should check that their settings are
     compatible (see ?download.file: the most commonly used forms work
     for both "internal" and "libcurl").

   * table() has been amended to be more internally consistent and
     become back compatible to R <= 2.7.2 again.  Consequently,
     table(1:2, exclude = NULL) no longer contains a zero count for
     <NA>, but useNA = "always" continues to do so.

   * summary.default() no longer rounds, but its print method does
     resulting in less extraneous rounding, notably of numbers in the
     ten thousands.

   * factor(x, exclude = L) behaves more rationally when x or L are
     character vectors.  Further, exclude = <factor> now behaves as
     documented for long.

   * Arithmetic, logic (&, |) and comparison (aka 'relational', e.g.,
     <, ==) operations with arrays now behave consistently, notably
     for arrays of length zero.

     Arithmetic between length-1 arrays and longer non-arrays had
     silently dropped the array attributes and recycled.  This now
     gives a warning and will signal an error in the future, as it has
     always for logic and comparison operations in these cases (e.g.,
     compare matrix(1,1) + 2:3 and matrix(1,1) < 2:3).

   * The JIT ('Just In Time') byte-code compiler is now enabled by
     default at its level 3. This means functions will be compiled on
     first or second use and top-level loops will be compiled and then
     run.  (Thanks to Tomas Kalibera for extensive work to make this
     possible.)

     For now, the compiler will not compile code containing explicit
     calls to browser(): this is to support single stepping from the
     browser() call.

     JIT compilation can be disabled for the rest of the session using
     compiler::enableJIT(0) or by setting environment variable
     R_ENABLE_JIT to 0.

   * xtabs() works more consistently with NAs, also in its result no
     longer setting them to 0.  Further, a new logical option addNA
     allows to count NAs where appropriate.  Additionally, for the
     case sparse = TRUE, the result's dimnames are identical to the
     default case's.

   * Matrix products now consistently bypass BLAS when the inputs have
     NaN/Inf values. Performance of the check of inputs has been
     improved. Performance when BLAS is used is improved for
     matrix/vector and vector/matrix multiplication (DGEMV is now used
     instead of DGEMM).

     One can now choose from alternative matrix product
     implementations _via_ options(matprod = ).  The "internal"
     implementation is not optimized for speed but consistent in
     precision with other summations in R (using long double
     accumulators where available).  "blas" calls BLAS directly for
     best speed, but usually with undefined behavior for inputs with
     NaN/Inf.

   * factor() now uses order() to sort its levels, not sort.list().
     This makes factor() support custom vector-like objects if methods
     for the appropriate generics are defined. This change has the
     side effect of making factor() succeed on empty or length-one
     non-atomic vector(-like) types (e.g., list), where it failed
     before.

 NEW FEATURES:

   * User errors such as integrate(f, 0:1, 2) are now caught.

   * Add signature argument to debug(), debugonce(), undebug() and
     isdebugged() for more conveniently debugging S3 and S4 methods.
     (Based on a patch by Gabe Becker.)

   * Add utils::debugcall() and utils::undebugcall() for debugging the
     function that would be called by evaluating the given expression.
     When the call is to an S4 generic or standard S3 generic,
     debugcall() debugs the method that would be dispatched. A number
     of internal utilities were added to support this, most notably
     utils::isS3stdGeneric().  (Based on a patch by Gabe Becker.)

   * Add utils::strcapture(). Given a character vector and a regular
     expression containing capture expressions, strcapture() will
     extract the captured tokens into a tabular data structure,
     typically a data.frame.

   * str() and strOptions() get a new option drop.deparse.attr with
     improved but _changed_ default behaviour for expressions.  For
     expression objects x, str(x) now may remove extraneous white
     space and truncate long lines.

   * str(<looooooooong_string>) is no longer very slow; inspired by
     Mikko Korpela's proposal in PR#16527.

   * str(x)'s default method is more "accurate" and hence somewhat
     more generous in displaying character vectors; this will
     occasionally change R outputs (and need changes to some
     *.Rout(.save) files).

     For a classed integer vector such as x <- xtabs(~ c(1,9,9,9)),
     str(x) now shows both the class and "int", instead of only the
     latter.

   * isSymmetric(m) is much faster for large asymmetric matrices m
     _via_ pre-tests and a new option tol1 (with which strict back
     compatibility is possible but not the default).

   * The result of eigen() now is of class "eigen" in the default case
     when eigenvectors are computed.

   * Zero-length date and date-time objects (of classes "POSIX[cl]?t")
     now print() "recognizably".

   * xy.coords() and xyz.coords() get a new setLab option.

   * The method argument of sort.list(), order() and sort.int() gains
     an "auto" option (the default) which should behave the same as
     before when method was not supplied.

   * stopifnot(E, ..) now reports differences when E is a call to
     all.equal() and that is not true.

   * boxplot(<formula>, *) gain optional arguments drop, sep, and
     lex.order to pass to split.default() which itself gains an
     argument lex.order to pass to interaction() for more flexibility.

   * The plot() method for ppr() has enhanced default labels (xmin and
     main).

   * sample.int() gains an explicit useHash option (with a back
     compatible default).

   * identical() gains an ignore.srcref option which drops "srcref"
     and similar attributes when true (as by default).

   * diag(x, nrow = n) now preserves typeof(x), also for logical,
     integer and raw x (and as previously for complex and numeric).

   * smooth.spline() now allows direct specification of lambda, gets a
     hatvalues() method and keeps tol in the result, and optionally
     parts of the internal matrix computations.

   * addNA() is faster now, e.g. when applied twice.  (Part of
     PR#16895.)

   * New option rstandard(<lm>, type = "predicted") provides the
     "PRESS"-related leave-one-out cross-validation errors for linear
     models.

   * After seven years of deprecation, duplicated factor levels now
     produce a warning when printed and an error in levels<- instead
     of a warning.

   * Invalid factors, e.g., with duplicated levels (invalid but
     constructable) now give a warning when printed, _via_ new
     function .valid.factor().

   * sessionInfo() has been updated for Apple's change in OS naming as
     from '10.12' ('macOS Sierra' _vs_ 'OS X El Capitan').

     Its toLatex() method now includes the running component.

   * options(interrupt=) can be used to specify a default action for
     user interrupts.  For now, if this option is not set and the
     error option is set, then an unhandled user interrupt invokes the
     error option.  (This may be dropped in the future as interrupt
     conditions are not error conditions.)

   * In most cases user interrupt handlers will be called with a
     "resume" restart available.  Handlers can invoke this restart to
     resume computation. At the browser prompt the r command will
     invoke a "resume" restart if one is available. Some read
     operations cannot be resumed properly when interrupted and do not
     provide a "resume" restart.

   * Radix sort is now chosen by method = "auto" for sort.int() for
     double vectors (and hence used for sort() for unclassed double
     vectors), excluding 'long' vectors.

     sort.int(method = "radix") no longer rounds double vectors.

   * The default and data.frame methods for stack() preserve the names
     of empty elements in the levels of the ind column of the return
     value.  Set the new drop argument to TRUE for the previous
     behavior.

   * Speedup in simplify2array() and hence sapply() and mapply() (for
     the case of names and common length > 1), thanks to Suharto
     Anggono's PR#17118.

   * table(x, exclude = NULL) now sets useNA = "ifany" (instead of
     "always").  Together with the bug fixes for this case, this
     recovers more consistent behaviour compatible to older versions
     of R.  As a consequence, summary() for a logical vector no longer
     reports (zero) counts for NA when there are no NAs.

   * dump.frames() gets a new option include.GlobalEnv which allows to
     also dump the global environment, thanks to Andreas Kersting's
     proposal in PR#17116.

   * system.time() now uses message() instead of cat() when terminated
     early, such that suppressMessages() has an effect; suggested by
     Ben Bolker.

   * citation() supports inst/CITATION files from package source
     trees, with lib.loc pointing to the directory containing the
     package.

   * try() gains a new argument outFile with a default that can be
     modified _via_ options(try.outFile = .), useful notably for
     Sweave.

   * The unexported low-level functions in package parallel for
     passing serialized R objects to and from forked children now
     support long vectors on 64-bit platforms.  This removes some
     limits on higher-level functions such as mclapply() (but
     returning gigabyte results from forked processes _via_
     serialization should be avoided if at all possible).

   * Connections now print() without error even if invalid, e.g. after
     having been destroyed.

   * apropos() and find(simple.words = FALSE) no longer match object
     names starting with . which are known to be internal objects
     (such as .__S3MethodsTable__.).

   * Convenience function hasName() has been added; it is intended to
     replace the common idiom !is.null(x$name) without the usually
     unintended partial name matching.

   * strcapture() no longer fixes column names nor coerces strings to
     factors (suggested by Bill Dunlap).

   * strcapture() returns NA for non-matching values in x (suggested
     by Bill Dunlap).

   * source() gets new optional arguments, notably exprs; this is made
     use of in the new utility function withAutoprint().

   * sys.source() gets a new toplevel.env argument.  This argument is
     useful for frameworks running package tests; contributed by Tomas
     Kalibera.

   * Sys.setFileTime() and file.copy(copy.date = TRUE) will set
     timestamps with fractions of seconds on platforms/filesystems
     which support this.

   * (Windows only.) file.info() now returns file timestamps including
     fractions of seconds; it has done so on other platforms since R
     2.14.0.  (NB: some filesystems do not record modification and
     access timestamps to sub-second resolution.)

   * The license check enabled by options(checkPackageLicense = TRUE)
     is now done when the package's namespace is first loaded.

   * ppr() and supsmu() get an optional trace argument, and ppr(..,
     sm.method = ..spline) is no longer limited to sample size n <=
     2500.

   * The POSIXct method for print() gets optional tz and usetz
     arguments, thanks to a report from Jennifer S. Lyon.

   * New function check_packages_in_dir_details() in package tools for
     analyzing package-check log files to obtain check details.

   * Package tools now exports function CRAN_package_db() for
     obtaining information about current packages in the CRAN package
     repository, and several functions for obtaining the check status
     of these packages.

   * The (default) Stangle driver Rtangle allows annotate to be a
     function and gets a new drop.evalFALSE option.

   * The default method for quantile(x, prob) should now be monotone
     in prob, even in border cases, see PR#16672.

   * bug.report() now tries to extract an email address from a
     BugReports field, and if there is none, from a Contacts field.

   * The format() and print() methods for object.size() results get
     new options standard and digits; notably, standard = "IEC" and
     standard = "SI" allow more standard (but less common)
     abbreviations than the default ones, e.g. for kilobytes.  (From
     contributions by Henrik Bengtsson.)

   * If a reference class has a validity method, validObject will be
     called automatically from the default initialization method for
     reference classes.

   * tapply() gets new option default = NA allowing to change the
     previously hardcoded value.

   * read.dcf() now consistently interprets any 'whitespace' to be
     stripped to include newlines.

   * The maximum number of DLLs that can be loaded into R e.g. _via_
     dyn.load() can now be increased by setting the environment
     variable R_MAX_NUM_DLLS before starting R.

   * Assigning to an element of a vector beyond the current length now
     over-allocates by a small fraction. The new vector is marked
     internally as growable, and the true length of the new vector is
     stored in the truelength field. This makes building up a vector
     result by assigning to the next element beyond the current length
     more efficient, though pre-allocating is still preferred.  The
     implementation is subject to change and not intended to be used
     in packages at this time.

   * Loading the parallel package namespace no longer sets or changes
     the .Random.seed, even if R_PARALLEL_PORT is unset.

     NB: This can break reproducibility of output, and did for a CRAN
     package.

   * Methods "wget" and "curl" for download.file() now give an R error
     rather than a non-zero return value when the external command has
     a non-zero status.

   * Encoding name "utf8" is mapped to "UTF-8".  Many implementations
     of iconv accept "utf8", but not GNU libiconv (including the late
     2016 version 1.15).

   * sessionInfo() shows the full paths to the library or executable
     files providing the BLAS/LAPACK implementations currently in use
     (not available on Windows).

   * The binning algorithm used by bandwidth selectors bw.ucv(),
     bw.bcv() and bw.SJ() switches to a version linear in the input
     size n for n > nb/2.  (The calculations are the same, but for
     larger n/nb it is worth doing the binning in advance.)

   * There is a new option PCRE_study which controls when grep(perl =
     TRUE) and friends 'study' the compiled pattern.  Previously this
     was done for 11 or more input strings: it now defaults to 10 or
     more (but most examples need many more for the difference from
     studying to be noticeable).

   * grep(perl = TRUE) and friends can now make use of PCRE's
     Just-In-Time mechanism, for PCRE >= 8.20 on platforms where JIT
     is supported.  It is used by default whenever the pattern is
     studied (see the previous item).  (Based on a patch from Mikko
     Korpela.)

     This is controlled by a new option PCRE_use_JIT.

     Note that in general this makes little difference to the speed,
     and may take a little longer: its benefits are most evident on
     strings of thousands of characters.  As a side effect it reduces
     the chances of C stack overflow in the PCRE library on very long
     strings (millions of characters, but see next item).

     Warning: segfaults were seen using PCRE with JIT enabled on
     64-bit Sparc builds.

   * There is a new option PCRE_limit_recursion for grep(perl = TRUE)
     and friends to set a recursion limit taking into account R's
     estimate of the remaining C stack space (or 10000 if that is not
     available).  This reduces the chance of C stack overflow, but
     because it is conservative may report a non-match (with a
     warning) in examples that matched before.  By default it is
     enabled if any input string has 1000 or more bytes.  (PR#16757)

   * getGraphicsEvent() now works on X11(type = "cairo") devices.
     Thanks to Frederick Eaton (for reviving an earlier patch).

   * There is a new argument onIdle for getGraphicsEvent(), which
     allows an R function to be run whenever there are no pending
     graphics events.  This is currently only supported on X11
     devices.  Thanks to Frederick Eaton.

   * The deriv() and similar functions now can compute derivatives of
     log1p(), sinpi() and similar one-argument functions, thanks to a
     contribution by Jerry Lewis.

   * median() gains a formal ... argument, so methods with extra
     arguments can be provided.

   * strwrap() reduces indent if it is more than half width rather
     than giving an error.  (Suggested by Bill Dunlap.)

   * When the condition code in if(.) or while(.) is not of length
     one, an error instead of a warning may be triggered by setting an
     environment variable, see the help page.

   * Formatting and printing of bibliography entries (bibentry) is
     more flexible and better documented.  Apart from setting
     options(citation.bibtex.max = 99) you can also use
     print(<citation>, bibtex=TRUE) (or format(..)) to get the BibTeX
     entries in the case of more than one entry.  This also affects
     citation().  Contributions to enable style = "html+bibtex" are
     welcome.

 C-LEVEL FACILITIES:

   * Entry points R_MakeExternalPtrFn and R_ExternalPtrFn are now
     declared in header Rinternals.h to facilitate creating and
     retrieving an R external pointer from a C function pointer
     without ISO C warnings about the conversion of function pointers.

   * There was an exception for the native Solaris C++ compiler to the
     dropping (in R 3.3.0) of legacy C++ headers from headers such as
     R.h and Rmath.h - this has now been removed.  That compiler has
     strict C++98 compliance hence does not include extensions in its
     (non-legacy) C++ headers: some packages will need to request
     C++11 or replace non-C++98 calls such as lgamma: see SS1.6.4 of
     'Writing R Extensions'.

     Because it is needed by about 70 CRAN packages, headers R.h and
     Rmath.h still declare

     use namespace std;

     when included on Solaris.

   * When included from C++, the R headers now use forms such as
     std::FILE directly rather than including the line

     using std::FILE;

     C++ code including these headers might be relying on the latter.

   * Headers R_ext/BLAS.h and R_ext/Lapack.h have many improved
     declarations including const for double-precision complex
     routines. _Inter alia_ this avoids warnings when passing 'string
     literal' arguments from C++11 code.

   * Headers for Unix-only facilities R_ext/GetX11Image.h,
     R_ext/QuartzDevice.h and R_ext/eventloop.h are no longer
     installed on Windows.

   * No-longer-installed headers GraphicsBase.h, RGraphics.h,
     Rmodules/RX11.h and Rmodules/Rlapack.h which had a LGPL license
     no longer do so.

   * HAVE_UINTPTR_T is now defined where appropriate by Rconfig.h so
     that it can be included before Rinterface.h when CSTACK_DEFNS is
     defined and a C compiler (not C++) is in use.  Rinterface.h now
     includes C header stdint.h or C++11 header cstdint where needed.

   * Package tools has a new function
     package_native_routine_registration_skeleton() to assist adding
     native-symbol registration to a package.  See its help and SS5.4.1
     of 'Writing R Extensions' for how to use it.  (At the time it was
     added it successfully automated adding registration to over 90%
     of CRAN packages which lacked it.  Many of the failures were
     newly-detected bugs in the packages, e.g. 50 packages called
     entry points with varying numbers of arguments and 65 packages
     called entry points not in the package.)

 INSTALLATION on a UNIX-ALIKE:

   * readline headers (and not just the library) are required unless
     configuring with --with-readline=no.

   * configure now adds a compiler switch for C++11 code, even if the
     compiler supports C++11 by default.  (This ensures that g++ 6.x
     uses C++11 mode and not its default mode of C++14 with 'GNU
     extensions'.)

     The tests for C++11 compliance are now much more comprehensive.
     For gcc < 4.8, the tests from R 3.3.0 are used in order to
     maintain the same behaviour on Linux distributions with long-term
     support.

   * An alternative compiler for C++11 is now specified with CXX11,
     not CXX1X. Likewise C++11 flags are specified with CXX11FLAGS and
     the standard (e.g., -std=gnu++11 is specified with CXX11STD.

   * configure now tests for a C++14-compliant compiler by testing
     some basic features.  This by default tries flags for the
     compiler specified by CXX11, but an alternative compiler, options
     and standard can be specified by variables CXX14, CXX14FLAGS and
     CXX14STD (e.g., -std=gnu++14).

   * There is a new macro CXXSTD to help specify the standard for C++
     code, e.g. -std=c++98.  This makes it easier to work with
     compilers which default to a later standard: for example, with
     CXX=g++6 CXXSTD=-std=c++98 configure will select commands for g++
     6.x which conform to C++11 and C++14 where specified but
     otherwise use C++98.

   * Support for the defunct IRIX and OSF/1 OSes and Alpha CPU has
     been removed.

   * configure checks that the compiler specified by $CXX $CXXFLAGS is
     able to compile C++ code.

   * configure checks for the required header sys/select.h (or
     sys/time.h on legacy systems) and system call select and aborts
     if they are not found.

   * If available, the POSIX 2008 system call utimensat will be used
     by Sys.setFileTime() and file.copy(copy.date = TRUE).  This may
     result in slightly more accurate file times.  (It is available on
     Linux and FreeBSD but not macOS.)

   * The minimum version requirement for libcurl has been reduced to
     7.22.0, although at least 7.28.0 is preferred and earlier
     versions are little tested.  (This is to support Debian 7
     'Wheezy' LTS and Ubuntu 'Precise' 12.04 LTS, although the latter
     is close to end-of-life.)

   * configure tests for a C++17-compliant compiler.  The tests are
     experimental and subject to change in the future.

 INCLUDED SOFTWARE:

   * (Windows only) Tcl/Tk version 8.6.4 is now included in the binary
     builds.  The tcltk*.chm help file is no longer included; please
     consult the online help at <URL: http://www.tcl.tk/man/> instead.

   * The version of LAPACK included in the sources has been updated to
     3.7.0: no new routines have been added to R.

 PACKAGE INSTALLATION:

   * There is support for compiling C++14 or C++17 code in packages on
     suitable platforms: see 'Writing R Extensions' for how to request
     this.

   * The order of flags when LinkingTo other packages has been changed
     so their include directories come earlier, before those specified
     in CPPFLAGS.  This will only have an effect if non-system include
     directories are included with -I flags in CPPFLAGS (and so not
     the default -I/usr/local/include which is treated as a system
     include directory on most platforms).

   * Packages which register native routines for .C or .Fortran need
     to be re-installed for this version (unless installed with
     R-devel SVN revision r72375 or later).

   * Make variables with names containing CXX1X are deprecated in
     favour of those using CXX11, but for the time being are still
     made available _via_ file etc/Makeconf.  Packages using them
     should be converted to the new forms and made dependent on R (>=
     3.4.0).

 UTILITIES:

   * Running R CMD check --as-cran with _R_CHECK_CRAN_INCOMING_REMOTE_
     false now skips tests that require remote access.  The remaining
     (local) tests typically run quickly compared to the remote tests.

   * R CMD build will now give priority to vignettes produced from
     files in the vignettes directory over those in the inst/doc
     directory, with a warning that the latter are being ignored.

   * R CMD config gains a --all option for printing names and values
     of all basic configure variables.

     It now knows about all the variables used for the C++98, C++11
     and C++14 standards.

   * R CMD check now checks that output files in inst/doc are newer
     than the source files in vignettes.

   * For consistency with other package subdirectories, files named
     *.r in the tests directory are now recognized as tests by R CMD
     check. (Wish of PR#17143.)

   * R CMD build and R CMD check now use the _union_ of R_LIBS and
     .libPaths().  They may not be equivalent, e.g., when the latter
     is determined by R_PROFILE.

   * R CMD build now preserves dates when it copies files in preparing
     the tarball.  (Previously on Windows it changed the dates on all
     files; on Unix, it changed some dates when installing vignettes.)

   * The new option R CMD check --no-stop-on-test-error allows running
     the remaining tests (under tests/) even if one gave an error.

   * Check customization _via_ environment variables to detect side
     effects of .Call() and .External() calls which alter their
     arguments is described in SS8 of the 'R Internals' manual.

   * R CMD check now checks any BugReports field to be non-empty and a
     suitable single URL.

   * R CMD check --as-cran now NOTEs if the package does not register
     its native routines or does not declare its intentions on
     (native) symbol search.  (This will become a WARNING in due
     course.)

 DEPRECATED AND DEFUNCT:

   * (Windows only) Function setInternet2() is defunct.

   * Installation support for readline emulations based on editline
     (aka libedit) is deprecated.

   * Use of the C/C++ macro NO_C_HEADERS is defunct and silently
     ignored.

   * unix.time(), a traditional synonym for system.time(), has been
     deprecated.

   * structure(NULL, ..) is now deprecated as you cannot set
     attributes on NULL.

   * Header Rconfig.h no longer defines SUPPORT_OPENMP; instead use
     _OPENMP (as documented for a long time).

   * (C-level Native routine registration.)  The deprecated styles
     member of the R_CMethodDef and R_FortranMethodDef structures has
     been removed.  Packages using these will need to be re-installed
     for R 3.4.0.

   * The deprecated support for PCRE versions older than 8.20 will be
     removed in R 3.4.1. (Versions 8.20-8.31 will still be accepted
     but remain deprecated.)

 BUG FIXES:

   * Getting or setting body() or formals() on non-functions for now
     signals a warning and may become an error for setting.

   * match(x, t), duplicated(x) and unique(x) work as documented for
     complex numbers with NAs or NaNs, where all those containing NA
     do match, whereas in the case of NaN's both real and imaginary
     parts must match, compatibly with how print() and format() work
     for complex numbers.

   * deparse(<complex>, options = "digits17") prints more nicely now,
     mostly thanks to a suggestion by Richie Cotton.

   * Rotated symbols in plotmath expressions are now positioned
     correctly on x11(type = "Xlib"). (PR#16948)

   * as<-() avoids an infinite loop when a virtual class is interposed
     between a subclass and an actual superclass.

   * Fix level propagation in unlist() when the list contains
     zero-length lists or factors.

   * Fix S3 dispatch on S4 objects when the methods package is not
     attached.

   * Internal S4 dispatch sets .Generic in the method frame for
     consistency with standardGeneric().  (PR#16929)

   * Fix order(x, decreasing = TRUE) when x is an integer vector
     containing MAX_INT.  Ported from a fix Matt Dowle made to
     data.table.

   * Fix caching by callNextMethod(), resolves PR#16973 and PR#16974.

   * grouping() puts NAs last, to be consistent with the default
     behavior of order().

   * Point mass limit cases: qpois(-2, 0) now gives NaN with a warning
     and qgeom(1, 1) is 0.  (PR#16972)

   * table() no longer drops an "NaN" factor level, and better obeys
     exclude = <chr>, thanks to Suharto Anggono's patch for PR#16936.
     Also, in the case of exclude = NULL and NAs, these are tabulated
     correctly (again).

     Further, table(1:2, exclude = 1, useNA = "ifany") no longer
     erroneously reports <NA> counts.

     Additionally, all cases of empty exclude are equivalent, and
     useNA is not overwritten when specified (as it was by exclude =
     NULL).

   * wilcox.test(x, conf.int=TRUE) no longer errors out in cases where
     the confidence interval is not available, such as for x = 0:2.

   * droplevels(f) now keeps <NA> levels when present.

   * In integer arithmetic, NULL is now treated as integer(0) whereas
     it was previously treated as double(0).

   * The radix sort considers NA_real_ and NaN to be equivalent in
     rank (like the other sort algorithms).

   * When index.return=TRUE is passed to sort.int(), the radix sort
     treats NAs like sort.list() does (like the other sort
     algorithms).

   * When in tabulate(bin, nbin) length(bin) is larger than the
     maximal integer, the result is now of type double and hence no
     longer silently overflows to wrong values.  (PR#17140)

   * as.character.factor() respects S4 inheritance when checking the
     type of its argument. (PR#17141)

   * The factor method for print() no longer sets the class of the
     factor to NULL, which would violate a basic constraint of an S4
     object.

   * formatC(x, flag = f) allows two new flags, and signals an error
     for invalid flags also in the case of character formatting.

   * Reading from file("stdin") now also closes the connection and
     hence no longer leaks memory when reading from a full pipe,
     thanks to G'abor Cs'ardi, see thread starting at <URL:
     https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2016-November/073360.html>.

   * Failure to create file in tempdir() for compressed pdf() graphics
     device no longer errors (then later segfaults).  There is now a
     warning instead of error and compression is turned off for the
     device.  Thanks to Alec Wysoker (PR#17191).

   * Asking for methods() on "|" returns only S3 methods. See <URL:
     https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2016-December/073476.html>.

   * dev.capture() using Quartz Cocoa device (macOS) returned invalid
     components if the back-end chose to use ARGB instead of RGBA
     image format. (Reported by Noam Ross.)

   * seq("2", "5") now works too, equivalently to "2":"5" and
     seq.int().

   * seq.int(to = 1, by = 1) is now correct, other cases are integer
     (instead of double) when seq() is integer too, and the
     "non-finite" error messages are consistent between seq.default()
     and seq.int(), no longer mentioning NaN etc.

   * rep(x, times) and rep.int(x, times) now work when times is larger
     than the largest value representable in an integer vector.
     (PR#16932)

   * download.file(method = "libcurl") does not check for URL
     existence before attempting downloads; this is more robust to
     servers that do not support HEAD or range-based retrieval, but
     may create empty or incomplete files for aborted download
     requests.

   * Bandwidth selectors bw.ucv(), bw.bcv() and bw.SJ() now avoid
     integer overflow for large sample sizes.

   * str() no longer shows "list output truncated", in cases that list
     was not shown at all.  Thanks to Neal Fultz (PR#17219)

   * Fix for cairo_pdf() (and svg() and cairo_ps()) when replaying a
     saved display list that contains a mix of grid and graphics
     output.  (Report by Yihui Xie.)

   * The str() and as.hclust() methods for "dendrogram" now also work
     for deeply nested dendrograms thanks to non-recursive
     implementations by Bradley Broom.

   * sample() now uses two uniforms for added precision when the
     uniform generator is Knuth-TAOCP, Knuth-TAOCP-2002, or a
     user-defined generator and the population size is 2^25 or
     greater.

   * If a vignette in the vignettes directory is listed in
     .Rbuildignore, R CMD build would not include it in the tarball,
     but would include it in the vignette database, leading to a check
     warning.  (PR#17246)

   * tools::latexToUtf8() infinite looped on certain inputs.
     (PR#17138)

   * terms.formula() ignored argument names when determining whether
     two terms were identical.  (PR#17235)

   * callNextMethod() was broken when called from a method that
     augments the formal arguments of a primitive generic.

   * Coercion of an S4 object to a vector during sub-assignment into a
     vector failed to dispatch through the as.vector() generic (often
     leading to a segfault).

   * Fix problems in command completion: Crash (PR#17222) and junk
     display in Windows, handling special characters in filenames on
     all systems.


-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Office: A 4.23
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com











-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Office: A 4.23
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com




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