[Bioc-devel] problem in rbind with DelayedArray / HDF5Array package

[Elizabeth Purdom]

Hello,

I am trying to do a rbind a normal (in memory) matrix with a HDF5Matrix object or DelayedArray object and I am hitting problems. I’m using the development version of R and bioconductor (as of 2 weeks ago) and HDF5Array_1.7.9,   DelayedArray_0.5.23 — see sessionInfo at end of email.

Basically if I apply rbind between my normal matrix and a HDF5Matrix, I get an error that a method doesn't exist for a DataTable class. If I force my HDF5Matrix object into a DelayedMatrix object using ‘as', I either get 1) a warning that it doesn’t know how to select a method (even if I use DelayedArray::rbind in my command) or 2) In addition to the warning, an error that the column names don’t match, even though neither object has colnames (they are NULL). Which of these I get depends on the order of the entries to rbind — the warning-only version occurs if the DelayedMatrix object is first. 

The warning-only option version gives the correct answer, but I want to understand how to avoid the warning, since I am using this in a package. 

It also seems like a bug that it would matter the order of the arguments, nor why I need to manually manipulate the HDF5Matrix into a DelayedMatrix object in order to do rbind. 

Thanks,
Elizabeth Purdom

Here is my code setting up the objects:

> testdata<-matrix(rnorm(1000),nrow=100,ncol=10)
> testhdf<-HDF5Array::writeHDF5Array(testdata, "./trash.h5")
> class(testhdf)
[1] "HDF5Matrix"
attr(,"package")
[1] “HDF5Array"

Here are the errors/warnings I’m getting, some of which depend on the order of the entries into rbind:

> test1<-rbind(testhdf,testdata) #error is independent of order of entries
Error in rbind(...) : 
  missing 'rbind' method for DataTable class HDF5Matrix
> test2<-DelayedArray::rbind(as(testhdf,"DelayedMatrix"),testdata)
Warning message:
In methods:::.selectDotsMethod(classes, .MTable, .AllMTable) :
  multiple direct matches: "DelayedMatrix", "DataFrame"; using the first of these
> test3<-DelayedArray::rbind(testdata,as(testhdf,"DelayedMatrix"))
Error in rbind(...) : 
  column names for arg 2 do not match those of first arg
In addition: Warning message:
In methods:::.selectDotsMethod(classes, .MTable, .AllMTable) :
  multiple direct matches: "DataFrame", "DelayedMatrix"; using the first of these

> colnames(testdata)
NULL
> colnames(as(testhdf,"DelayedMatrix"))
NULL

Here is my sessionInfo:

> sessionInfo()
R Under development (unstable) (2018-03-22 r74446)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit)
Running under: OS X El Capitan 10.11.6

Matrix products: default
BLAS: /System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/vecLib.framework/Versions/A/libBLAS.dylib
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.5/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] HDF5Array_1.7.9     rhdf5_2.23.5        DelayedArray_0.5.23 BiocParallel_1.13.3 IRanges_2.13.28    
[6] S4Vectors_0.17.38   BiocGenerics_0.25.3 matrixStats_0.53.1 

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_3.5.0 tools_3.5.0    Rhdf5lib_1.1.5