[Bioc-devel] New SE or new assay in SE?

[Pages, Herve]

On 1/28/20 01:37, Laurent Gatto wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> Assume we have a SummarizedExperiment object `se` that contains raw count data, and a method `doProcess` that processes the data to produce a matrix of identical dimensions (for example log-transformation, normalisation, imputation, ...). What are the opinions in favour or against the following two options
> 
> - `doProcess(se)` returns a new SE object
> - `doProcess(se)` adds a new assay to se

Aren't these are the same?

SE objects are not reference objects i.e. they follow R standard 
copy-on-change semantic. This means that they never get modified **in 
place** (aka they're not "mutable"). So 'doProcess(se)' will always 
return a new object, whatever you do inside the function, that is, even 
if the function modifies 'se' internally e.g. with something like:

   assay(se, "new_assay") <- new_assay

Note that the assay() setter itself like all setters also produces a new 
object. The parser actually replaces the following code

   assay(se, "new_assay") <- new_assay

with

   se <- `assay<-`(se, "new_assay", value=new_assay)

As you can see the previous `se` is replaced with the new one which 
gives the **illusion** of in-place replacement but it's not.

Hope this helps,
H.


> 
> If you are interested about the broader context about this question, see https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__github.com_waldronlab_MultiAssayExperiment_issues_266&d=DwICAg&c=eRAMFD45gAfqt84VtBcfhQ&r=BK7q3XeAvimeWdGbWY_wJYbW0WYiZvSXAJJKaaPhzWA&m=Of3qgEC1ElS9Ji3Iu2vNk93_Fj3m50sTV2zT0dyAKvA&s=qimtz2YygmTlAiYZOWZJrwPMo6eMKy5E5Rew60452TQ&e=
> 
> Thank you in advance for your input.
> 
> Laurent
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 

-- 
Hervé Pagès

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