Dear Hadley:
Thanks for that. Digits are not numbers. Numbers are not data. Data is not information. Information is not intelligence. Intelligence is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. And your "is." warnings are more useful than my trivia here.
Spencer
On 5/9/2014 2:42 PM, Hadley Wickham wrote:
Beware of the is.* functions: * is.object() does not test the usual definition of objects * is.vector() does not test the usual definition of vectors * is.numeric() does not work the same way as is.character() or is.integer() * is.Date() doesn't exist * is.nan() doesn't return TRUE for some NaNs Hadley On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Spencer Graves <spencer.gra...@structuremonitoring.com> wrote:Hi, Duncan: Thanks very much. I used to think that everything in R was a object. Now I know that is.object(quote(x)) is FALSE. (A decade ago, S-Plus asked me if I wanted to save changes to history. I thought, "Wow! Do I get to change history?" Hadley's "Advanced R" book mentions "Reference classes" in his "OO field guide". It includes an example where changing "a" changes a "copy" previously made: b <- a b$balance #> [1] 200 a$balance <- 0 b$balance #> [1] 0 This bothers me far more than an object in R that's not an object ;-) Best Wishes, Spencer On 5/9/2014 6:48 AM, Bert Gunter wrote:Ahhh. Thanks Duncan. -- Bert Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics (650) 467-7374 "Data is not information. Information is not knowledge. And knowledge is certainly not wisdom." H. Gilbert Welch On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:41 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com> wrote:On 09/05/2014, 2:41 AM, Bert Gunter wrote:Spencer: Hmmm.... Well, I don't get what's going on here -- as.character.default is internal -- but could you method-ize a simple synonym:See ?InternalMethods: "For efficiency, internal dispatch only occurs on objects, that is those for which is.object returns true." Duncan MurdochasChar<- function(e,...)UseMethod("asChar") asChar.call <- function(e,...)deparse(e,...) asChar.default <- function(e,...)as.character(e,...)asChar(xDy)[1] "x$y"asChar(1:5)[1] "1" "2" "3" "4" "5" Cheers, Bert Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics (650) 467-7374 "Data is not information. Information is not knowledge. And knowledge is certainly not wisdom." H. Gilbert Welch On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 8:56 PM, Spencer Graves <spencer.gra...@structuremonitoring.com> wrote:On 5/8/2014 8:05 PM, Bert Gunter wrote:[1] "x$y" Spencer: Does deparse(substitute(x$y)) [1] "x$y" do what you want?No: The problem is methods dispatch. class(quote(x$y)) = 'call', but as.character(quote(x$y)) does NOT go to "as.character.call". deparse(quote(x$y)) returns the answer I want, as Greg Snow noted earlier. However, it would be easier to remember if I could write as.character(quote(x$y)) and get the same thing. With "as.character.call <- function(x, ...)deparse(x, ...)", as.character.call(quote(x$y)) returns "x$y", as desired. However, the methods dispatch one might naively expect fails, as noted above. Thanks, SpencerCheers, Bert -- Bert Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics (650) 467-7374 "Data is not information. Information is not knowledge. And knowledge is certainly not wisdom." H. Gilbert Welch On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 5:56 PM, Spencer Graves <spencer.gra...@structuremonitoring.com> wrote:"as.character.call" seems not to work as an alias for deparse. Consider the following: xDy <- quote(x$y) class(xDy) "call" as.character.call <- function(x, ...)deparse(x, ...) as.character(xDy) [1] "$" "x" "y" # fails str(xDy) # language x$y as.character.language <- function(x, ...)"language" as.character(xDy) [1] "$" "x" "y" Is it feasible to construct a method for "as.character" that works for objects of class "call"? Thanks, Spencer ################# Thanks for the quick replies from Richard Heiberger, Greg Show & Bert Gunter. Might it make sense to create as.character.call as an alias for deparse? A few years ago, I wrote several functions like "predict.fd" as aliases for functions with less memorable names like "eval.fd". Doing that made the "fda" package easier to use, at least for me ;-) Thanks again, Spencer On 5/7/2014 2:39 PM, Bert Gunter wrote:... andstr(quote(x$y))language x$yas.list(quote(x$y))[[1]] `$` [[2]] x [[3]] y ## may be instructive. Cheers, Bert Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics (650) 467-7374 "Data is not information. Information is not knowledge. And knowledge is certainly not wisdom." H. Gilbert Welch On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Greg Snow <538...@gmail.com> wrote:deparse(quote(x$y))[1] "x$y" It looks like deparse does what you want here. On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 3:23 PM, Spencer Graves <spencer.gra...@structuremonitoring.com> wrote:Hello, All: Is there a simple utility someplace to convert "quote(x$y)" to "x$y"? I ask, because as.character(quote(x$y)) is a character vector of length 3 = "$" "x" "y". I want to convert this to "x$y" for a diagnostic message. class(quote(x$y)) = "call", which suggests I could write "as.character.call" to perform this function. However, before I do, I felt a need to ask for other thoughts on this. Thanks, Spencer -- Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D. 538...@gmail.com ______________________________________________ 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.______________________________________________ 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.
-- Spencer Graves, PE, PhD President and Chief Technology Officer Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc. 751 Emerson Ct. San José, CA 95126 ph: 408-655-4567 web: www.structuremonitoring.com ______________________________________________ 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.
