[R] Funny warning message

[Bill Venables]

>>>>> "John" == John Logsdon <j.logsdon at lancaster.ac.uk> writes:

    John> So, as an entry to the wish-list, since R handles it
    John> correctly, wouldn't it be better to suppress the
    John> warning message - via an option statement.  After all
    John> t() is clearly different to t[ ] or t so the context
    John> should be able to determine what is really wanted.

As it was doing, of course.  All you were getting was a warning
message, which to my mind is not a bad idea.  If you did use t
for a function name (and if you use it as a variable name, why
not a function?) you would probably find that some vital system
function was suddenly and mysteriously broken.

    John> As a second entry to the wish-list, would it be
    John> possible to set an option that ensured vector lengths
    John> were strictly matched?  I find that whenever I drop a
    John> booboo and have mismatched vector length, the warning

(`drop' a booboo?  I think the thing to avoid is making one in
the first place... :-)

    John> message indicates that I have indeed done something
    John> wrong.  At the moment, I can't conceive of a situation
    John> when an operation on two vectors where one is not the
    John> same length as the other *or* one is effectively a
    John> scalar (vector length 1) can be a legal statement.
    John> Maybe some library functions do assume this, in which
    John> case the user (or function) could store the option an
    John> switch it off during the body.

    John> Perhaps options(vector.match=TRUE)?

There are many situations where quite sensible programming does
make use of the recycling rule to good advantage, but I agree
that there are few (if any) cases where you need it when the
lengths are not strictly proportional.  For example consider a
calculation like finding a correlation matrix (if there were not
a built-in function to do it, I know):

V <- var(X)
SD <- sqrt(diag(V))
R <- t(V/SD)/SD

Compare the last step with the operations and memory use in

R <- diag(1/SD) %*% V %*% diag(1/SD)

a style many people do adopt.  Of course if V is very large,
transpostion is not a trivial operation, either.

    John> Since I don't use S+, I don't know what they do but S+
    John> is not the oracle anyway.

The latest version of S (version 4) outlaws vector arithmetic
with vectors of non-proportional sizes.

I think S (if not S+) is a bit of an oracle, too, by the way, and
going against the fundamental design is something that should be
done with great caution.  There is a lot of occluded wisdom in S.

Bill Venables.

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