R 2.5.0 is released

Peter Dalgaard P.Dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk
Tue Apr 24 12:34:31 CEST 2007


I've rolled up R-2.5.0.tar.gz a short while ago. This is a development 
release which contains a number of new features. In particular:

  - Object name completion by integration of package 'rcompletion' by 
    Deepayan Sarkar
  - New recommended package 'codetools' by Luke Tierney
  - New Rscript front-end, which enables shell-like R scripting

also, a number of mostly minor bugs have been fixed. See the full list
of changes below.

You can get it (some time this evening) from

http://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-2/R-2.5.0.tar.gz

or wait for it to be mirrored at a CRAN site nearer to you. In case of 
impatience, try http://www.biostat.ku.dk/~pd/R-release

Binaries for various platforms will appear in due course.
 
        For the R Core Team

        Peter Dalgaard

These are the md5sums for the freshly created files, in case you wish
to check that they are uncorrupted:
a8efde35b940278de19730d326f58449  AUTHORS
eb723b61539feef013de476e68b5c50a  COPYING
a6f89e2100d9b6cdffcea4f398e37343  COPYING.LIB
aa6d06dd154bbde39b4d35f26068675d  FAQ
70447ae7f2c35233d3065b004aa4f331  INSTALL
b12ff4c900a49f0d7786d80e249934c9  NEWS
88bbd6781faedc788a1cbd434194480c  ONEWS
4f004de59e24a52d0f500063b4603bcb  OONEWS
b9088663fc539c059acfaf19d6d90a69  R-2.5.0.tar.gz
b9088663fc539c059acfaf19d6d90a69  R-latest.tar.gz
433182754c05c2cf7a04ad0da474a1d0  README
020479f381d5f9038dcb18708997f5da  RESOURCES
4eaf8a3e428694523edc16feb0140206  THANKS

This is the relevant part of the NEWS file:


		CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.5.0


USER-VISIBLE CHANGES

    o	apropos(x) and find(x) now both only work for character 'x',
	and hence drop all non-standard evaluation behaviour.

    o	Data frames can have 'automatic' row names which are not
	converted to dimnames by as.matrix().  (Consequently, e.g.,
	t(.)  for such data frames has NULL column names.)  This
	change leads to memory reductions in several places, but can
	break code which assumes character dimnames for data frames
	derived from matrices.

	No existing R object is regarded as having 'automatic' row
	names, and it may be beneficial to recreate such objects via
	read.table() or data.frame().

    o	Using $ on an atomic vector now raises a warning, as does use
	on an S4 class for which a method has not been defined.

    o	The Unix-alike readline terminal interface now does
	command-completion for R objects, incorporating the
	functionality formerly in package 'rcompletion' by Deepayan
	Sarkar.  This can be disabled by setting the environment
	variable R_COMPLETION=FALSE when starting R (e.g. in
	~/.Renviron).  (Note that when this is enabled, filename
	completion no longer works for file paths containing R
	operators such as '+' and '-'.)


NEW FEATURES

    o	abbreviate() no longer has an 8191 byte limit on the size of
	strings it can handle.

    o	abs(x) now returns integer for integer or logical arguments.

    o	apropos() has a new argument 'ignore.case' which defaults to
	TRUE, potentially matching more than previously, thanks to a
	suggestion by Seth Falcon.

    o	args(), str() and print() now give the argument lists of primitive
	functions.

    o	as.matrix() gains the '...' argument that several packages have
	assumed it always had (and S-PLUS has).

    o	Manipulation of integers as roman numerals via as.roman() in
	package utils.

    o	attr() no longer treats name = NA_character_ as meaning
	name = "NA".

    o	binom.test() now allows a 'fuzz' for calculated integer values
	in its x and n arguments.

    o	boxplot(*, notch = TRUE) now warns when notches are outside
	hinges; related to PR#7690.

    o	New function callCC() providing a downward-only version of
	Scheme's call with current continuation.

    o	capabilities() now has a "profmem" entry indicating whether
	R has been compiled with memory profiling.

    o	colnames<-() and rownames<-() now handle data frames explicitly,
	so calling colnames<- on a data frame no longer alters the
	representation of the row names.

    o	commandArgs() has a new 'trailingOnly' argument to be used in
	conjunction with --args.

    o	contour() now passes graphical parameters in '...' to axis()
	and box().

    o	New data set 'crimtab' on Student(1908)'s 3000 criminals.

    o	cut.default() has a new argument 'ordered_result'.

    o	.deparseOpts() has two new options: "keepNA" to ensure that
	different types (logical, integer, double, character and
	complex) of NAs are distinguished, and "S_compatible" to
	suppress the use of R-specific features such as 123L and to
	deparse integer values of a double vector with a trailing
	decimal point.

	The 'keepInteger' option now uses the suffix 'L' rather than
	as.integer() where possible (unless all entries are NA or
	"S_compatible" is also set).

	Other deparse options can now be added to "all" (which has not
	for some time actually switched on all options).

	Integer sequences m:n are now deparsed in that form.

    o	deparse() and dput() now include "keepInteger" and "keepNA" in
	their defaults for the 'control' argument.

    o   detach() now takes another argument, unload, which indicates
        whether or not to unload the package and then only cleans
        up the S4 methods if the package successfully unloads.

    o	There are new constants NA_integer_, NA_real_, NA_complex_ and
	NA_character_ to denote NAs of those types, and they will be
	used in deparsing in place of as.integer(NA) etc unless
	.deparseOpts() includes "S_compatible".

    o	dev.print() now recognizes 'screen devices' as all those with
	an enabled display list, rather than a hard-coded set.

    o	Objects of class "difftime" are now handled more flexibly. The
	units of such objects can now be accessed via a units()
	function, which also has a replacement form, and there are
	conversion methods to and from numeric, which also allow the
	specification of units.	 Objects of this class can also be
	stored in data frames now.  A format() method has been added,
	and the print method was revised.

    o	New function environmentName() to give the print name of
	environments such as "namespace:base".
	This is now used by str().

    o	New function env.profile() provides R level access to summary
	statistics on environments.  In a related patch, new.env()
	now allows the user to specify an initial size for a hashed
	environment.

    o	file() can read the X11 clipboard selection as "X11_clipboard"
	on suitable X11-using systems.

    o	file("stdin") is now recognized, and refers to the process's
	'stdin' file stream whereas stdin() refers to the console.
	These may differ, for example for a GUI console, an embedded
	application of R or if --file= has been used.

    o	file_test() is now also available in package utils.
	(It is now private in package tools.)

    o	file.show() gains an 'encoding' argument.

    o	New functions formatUL() and formatOL() in package utils for
	formatting unordered (itemize) and ordered (enumerate) lists.

    o	The statistics reported when gcinfo(TRUE) are now of the amounts
	used (in Mb) and not of the amounts free (which are not really
	relevant when there are no hard limits, only gc trigger points).

    o	New function get_all_vars() to retrieve all the
	(untransformed) variables that the default method of
	model.frame() would use to create the model frame.

    o	interaction() has a new argument 'lex.order'.

    o   initialize() (in methods) now tries to be smarter about
        updating the new instance in place, thereby reducing
        copying.

    o	install.packages(dependencies = NA) is a new default, which is
	to install essential dependencies when installing from
	repositories to a single library.  As a result of this change,
	update.packages() will install any new dependencies of the
	packages it is updating (alongside the package in the same
	library tree).

	If 'lib' is not specified or is specified of length one and
	the chosen location is not a writable directory,
	install.packages() offers to create a personal library
	directory for you if one does not already exist, and to
	install there.

    o	is.atomic, is.call, is.character, is.complex, is.double (== is.real),
	is.environment, is.expression, is.function, is.integer,
	is.list, is.logical, is.null, is.object, is.pairlist,
	is.recursive, is.single and is.symbol (== is.name) are no
	longer internally S3 generic, nor can S4 methods be written
	for them.

	The "factor" methods of is.integer and is.numeric have been
	replaced by internal code.

    o	Added is.raw() for completeness.

    o	l10n_info() also reports if the current locale is Latin-1.

    o	levels<-(), names() and names<-() now dispatch internally for
	efficiency and so no longer have S3 default methods.

    o	.libPaths() now does both tilde and glob expansion.

    o	Functions lm(), glm() loess(), xtabs() and the default method
	of model.frame() coerce their 'formula'	argument (if supplied)
	to a formula.

    o	max(), min() and range() now work with character vectors.

    o	message() has a new argument 'appendLF' to handle messages
	with and without newlines.  There is a new message class
	packageStartupMessage() that can be suppressed separately.

    o	A new function, method.skeleton() writes a skeleton version of
        a call to setMethod() to a file, with correct arguments and
        format, given the name of the function and the method signature.

    o	mode<- and storage.mode<- do slightly less copying.

    o	nls.control(* , printEval = FALSE, warnOnly = FALSE) are two new
	options to help better analyze (non-)convergence of nls(),
	thanks to Kate Mullen.

	nls() and summary(nls()) now contain more information and also
	print information about convergence.

    o	options(device = ) now accepts a function object as well as
	the name of a function.

    o	pdf() supports new values for 'paper' of "US" (same as
	"letter"), "a4r" and "USr" (the latter two meaning rotated to
	landscape).  postscript() also accepts paper = "US".

    o	persp() now respects the graphical pars 'cex.axis', 'cex.lab',
	'font.axis' and 'font.lab'.

    o	New faster internal functions pmax.int() and pmin.int() for
	inputs which are atomic vectors without classes (called by
	pmax/pmin where applicable).

	pmin/pmax are now more likely to work with classed objects:
	they work with POSIXlt datetimes, for example.

    o	postscript() now by default writes grey colors (including black
	and white) via 'setgray', which gives more widely acceptable
	output.	 There are options to write pure RGB, CMYK or gray via
	the new argument 'colormodel'.

    o	rbind.data.frame() now ignores all zero-row inputs, as well as
	zero-column inputs (which it used to do, undocumented).	 This
	is because read.table() can create zero-row data frames with
	NULL columns, and those cannot be extended.

    o	readChar() and writeChar() can now work with a raw vector.

    o	read.table(), write.table() and allies have been moved to package
	utils.

    o	rgb() now accepts the red, green and blue components in a
	single matrix or data frame.

    o	New utility function RShowDoc() in package 'utils' to find and
	display manuals and other documentation files.

    o	New .row_names_info() utility function finds the number of rows
	efficiently for data frames; consequently, dim.data.frame()
	has become very fast for large data frames with 'automatic'
	row names.

    o	RSiteSearch() now also allows to search postings of the 'R-devel'
	mailing list.

    o	screeplot() is now (S3) generic with a default method, thanks
	to a patch from Gavin Simpson.

    o	Experimental 'verbose' argument for selectMethod().  Might be
	replaced later by a better interface for method selection
	inspection.

    o	Added links to source files to the parsing routines, so that
	source() can now echo the original source and comments (rather
	than deparsing).  This affects example() and Sweave() as well.

    o	stack() and unstack() have been moved to package utils.

    o	strptime() now sets the "tzone" attribute on the result if
	tz != "".

    o	str.default() typically prints fewer entries of logical vectors.

    o	The RweaveLatex driver for Sweave() now supports two new
	options: expand=FALSE, to show chunk references in the output,
	and concordance=TRUE, to output the concordance between input
	and output lines.

    o	system() now takes the same set of arguments on all platforms,
	with those which are not applicable being ignored with a
	warning.  Unix-alikes gain 'input' and 'wait', and Windows
	gains 'ignore.stderr'.

    o	system.time() and proc.time() now return an object of class
	"proc_time" with a print() method that returns a POSIX-like
	format with names.

    o	Sys.getenv() has a new argument 'unset' to allow unset and set
	to "" to be distinguished (if the OS does).  The results of
	Sys.getenv() are now sorted (by name).

    o	New function Sys.glob(), a wrapper for the POSIX.2 function
	glob(3) to do wildcard expansion (on systems which have it,
	plus an emulation on Windows).

    o	Sys.setenv() is a new (and preferred) synonym for Sys.putenv().
	The internal C code uses the POSIX-preferred 'setenv' rather
	than 'putenv' where the former is available.

    o	New function Sys.unsetenv() to remove environment variables
	(on systems where unsetenv is implemented or putenv can remove
	variables, such as on Windows).

    o	text(), mtext(), strheight(), strwidth(), legend(), axis(),
	title(), pie(), grid.text() and textGrob() all attempt to
	coerce non-language annotation objects (in the sense of is.object)
	to character vectors.  This is principally intended to cover
	factors and POSIXt and Date objects, and is done via the
	new utility function as.graphicsAnnot() in package grDevices.

    o	tcltk:tk_select.list() now chooses the width to fit the widest item.

    o	{re,un}tracemem() are now primitives for efficiency and so
	migrate from 'utils' to 'base'.

    o	union(), interect(), setdiff() and setequal() now coerce their
	arguments to be vectors (and they were documented only to
	apply to vectors).

    o	uniroot() now works if the zero occurs at one of the ends of
	the interval (suggestion of Tamas Papp).

    o	There is a new function View() for viewing matrix-like
	objects in a spreadsheet, which can be left up whilst R is
	running.

    o	New function withVisible() allows R level access to the
	visibility flag.

    o	zip.file.extract() has been moved to package utils.


    o	A few more cases of subassignment work, e.g. <raw>[] <- <list>
	and <vector>[] <- <expression>, with suitable coercion of the LHS.

    o	There is a warning if \ is used unnecessarily in a string when
	being parsed, e.g. "\." where probably "\\." was intended.
	("\." is valid, but the same as ".".)  Thanks to Bill Dunlap
	for the suggestion.

    o	Introduced the suffix L for integer literals to create
	integer rather than numeric values, e.g. 100L, 0x10L, 1e2L.

    o	Set the parser to give verbose error messages in case of
	syntax errors.

    o	The class "LinearMethodsList" has been extended and will be
	used to create list versions of methods, derived from the
	methods tables (environments).	The older recursive
	"MethodsList" class will be deprecated (by the release of
	2.5.0 if possible).

    o	There are more flexible ways to specify the default library
	search path.  In addition to R_LIBS and .Library, there are
	.Library.site (defaults to R_HOME/site-library) and
	R_LIBS_USER (defaults to a platform- and version-specific
	directory in ~/R).  See ?.libPaths for details.

    o	LAPACK has been updated to version 3.1.0.  This should cause
	only small changes to the output, but do remember that the sign
	of eigenvectors (and principal components) is indeterminate.

    o	PCRE has been updated to version 7.0.

    o	Several functions handle row names more efficiently:

	- read.table() and read.DIF() make use of integer row names
	  where appropriate, and avoid at least one copy in assigning
	  them.

	- data.frame() and the standard as.data.frame() methods avoid
	  generating long dummy row names and then discarding them.

	- expand.grid() and merge() generate compact 'automatic' row
	  names.

	- data.matrix() and as.matrix.data.frame() have a new argument
	  'rownames.force' that by default drops 'automatic' row names.

    o	<data frame>[i, j] is substantially more memory-efficient when
	only a small part of the data frame is selected, especially
	when (part of) a single column is selected.

    o	Command-line R (and Rterm.exe under Windows) accepts the options
	'-f filename', '--file=filename' and '-e expression' to follow
	other script interpreters.  These imply --no-save unless
	--save is specified.

    o	Invalid bytes in character strings in an MBCS now deparse/print
	in the form "\xc1" rather than "<c1>", which means they can be
	parsed/scanned.

    o	Printing functions (without source attributes) and expressions
	now preserves integers (using the L suffix) and NAs (using
	NA_real_ etc where necessary).

    o	The 'internal' objects .helpForCall, .tryHelp and topicName are
	no longer exported from 'utils'.

    o	The internal regex code has been upgraded to glibc 2.5 (from 2.3.6).

    o	Text help now attempts to display files which have an \encoding
	section in the specified encoding via file.show().

    o	R now attempts to keep track of character strings which are
	known to be in Latin-1 or UTF-8 and print or plot them
	appropriately in other locales.	 This is primarily intended
	to make it possible to use data in Western European languages
	in both Latin-1 and UTF-8 locales.  Currently scan(),
	read.table(), readLines(), parse() and source() allow
	encodings to be declared, and console input in suitable
	locales is also recognized.

	New function Encoding() can read or set the declared encodings
	for a character vector.

    o	There have been numerous performance improvements to the data
	editor on both Windows and X11.	 In particular, resizing the
	window works much better on X11.


DEPRECATED & DEFUNCT

    o	symbol.C() and symbol.For() are defunct, and have been replaced
	by wrappers that give a warning.

    o	Calling a builtin function with an empty argument is now always
	an error.

    o	The autoloading of ts() is defunct.

    o	The undocumented reserved word GLOBAL.ENV has been removed.
	(It was yet another way to get the value of the symbol
	.GlobalEnv.)

    o	The deprecated behaviour of structure() in adding a class when
	specifying with "tsp" or "levels" attributes is now defunct.

    o	unix() is now finally defunct, having been deprecated for
	at least seven years.

    o	Sys.putenv() is now deprecated in favour of Sys.setenv(),
	following the POSIX recommendation.

    o	Building R with --without-iconv is deprecated.

    o	Using $ on an atomic vector is deprecated (it was previously
	valid and documented to return NULL).

    o	The use of storage.mode<- for other than standard types (and
        in particular for value "single") is deprecated: use mode<-
	instead.


INSTALLATION

    o	A suitable iconv (e.g. from glibc or GNU libiconv) is
	required.  For 2.5.x only you can build R without it by
	configuring using --without-iconv.

    o	There is support again for building on AIX (tested on 5.2 and 5.3)
	thanks to Ei-ji Nakama.

    o	Autoconf 2.60 or later is used to create 'configure'.  This
	makes a number of small changes, and incorporates the changes
	to the detection of a C99-compliant C compiler backported for
	2.4.1.

    o	Detection of a Java development environment was added such that
	packages don't need to provide their own Java detection. Newly
	added make variables are JAVAC, JAVAH, JAR and JAVA_CPPFLAGS.

	R CMD javareconf was updated to look for the corresponding
	Java tools as well.

	In addition, Java detection honors user-supplied environment
	variables JAVA_CPPFLAGS, JAVA_LIBS and JAVA_LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

    o	Added workaround for reported non-POSIX sh on OSF1.  (PR#9375)

    o	'make install-strip' now works, stripping the executables and
	also the shared libraries and modules on platforms where
	'libtool' knows how to do so.

    o	Building R as a shared library and standalone nmath now
	installs pkg-config files 'libR.pc' and 'libRmath.pc' respectively.

    o	Added test for insufficiently complete implementation of sigaction.


C-LEVEL FACILITIES

    o	Functions str2type, type2char and type2str are now available in
	Rinternals.h.

    o	Added support for Objective C in R and packages (if available).

    o	R_ParseVector() has a new 4th argument 'SEXP srcfile' allowing
	source references to be attached to the returned expression list.

    o	Added ptr_R_WriteConsoleEx callback which allows consoles to
	distinguish between regular output and errors/warnings.
	To ensure backward compatibility it is only used if
	ptr_R_WriteConsole is set to NULL.


UTILITIES

    o	Additional Sweave() internal functions are exported to help
	writing new drivers, and RweaveLatexRuncode() is now created
	using a helper function (all from a patch submitted by Seth
	Falcon).

    o	The following additional flags are accessible from R CMD config:
	OBJC, OBJCFLAGS, JAR, JAVA, JAVAC, JAVAH, JAVA_HOME, JAVA_LIBS
	and JAVA_CPPFLAGS.

    o	R CMD build now takes the package name from the DESCRIPTION
	file and not from the directory.  (PR#9266)

    o	checkS3methods() (and hence R CMD check) now checks agreement
	with primitive internal generics, and checks for additional
	arguments in methods where the generic does not have a '...'
	argument.

	codoc() now knows the argument lists of primitive functions.

    o	R CMD INSTALL and R CMD REMOVE now use as the default library
	(if -l is not specified) the first library that would be used
	if R were run in the current environment (and they run R to
	find it).

    o	There is a new front-end Rscript which can be used for #!
	scripts and similar tasks.  See help("Rscript") and 'An
	Introduction to R' for further details.

    o	R CMD BATCH (not Windows) no longer prepends
	'invisible(options(echo = TRUE))' to the input script.  This
	was the default unless --slave is specified and the latter is
	no longer overridden.

	On all OSes it makes use of the -f argument to R, so
	file("stdin") can be used from BATCH scripts.

	On all OSes it reports proc.time() at the end of the script
	unless q() is called with options to inhibit this.

    o	R CMD INSTALL now prepends the installation directory (if
	specified) to the library search path.

    o	Package installation now re-encodes R files and the NAMESPACE
	file if the DESCRIPTION file specifies an encoding, and sets
	the encoding used for reading files in preparing for
	LazyData.  This will help if a package needs to be used in
	(say) both latin1 and UTF-8 locales on different systems.

    o	R CMD check now reports on non-ASCII strings in datasets.
	(These are a portability issue, which can be alleviated by
	marking their encoding: see 'Writing R Extensions'.)

    o	Rdiff now converts CRLF endings in the target file, and
	converts UTF-8 single quotes in either to ASCII quotes.

    o	New recommended package 'codetools' by Luke Tierney provides
	code-analysis tools.  This can optionally be used by 'R CMD
	check' to detect problems, especially symbols which are not
	visible.

    o	R CMD config now knows about LIBnn .

    o	New recommended package 'rcompgen' by Deepayan Sarkar
	provides support for command-line completion under the Unix
	terminal interface (provided readline is enabled) and the
	Windows Rgui and Rterm front ends.


BUG FIXES

    o	gc() can now report quantities of 'Vcells' in excess of 16Gb on
	64-bit systems (rather than reporting NA).

    o	Assigning class "factor" to an object now requires it has
	integer (and not say double) codes.

    o	structure() ensures that objects with added class "factor" have
	integer codes.

    o	The "formula" and "outer" attributes of datasets 'ChickWeight',
	'CO2', 'DNase', 'Indometh', 'Loblolly', 'Orange' and 'Theoph'
	now have an empty environment and not the environment used to
	dump the datasets in the package.

    o	Dataset 'Seatbelts' now correctly has class c("mts", "ts").

    o	str() now labels classes on data frames more coherently.

    o	Several 'special' primitives and .Internals could return
	invisibly if the evaluation of an argument led to the
	visibility flag being turned off.  These included
	as.character(), as.vector(), call(), dim(), dimnames(),
	lapply(), rep(), seq() and seq_along().  Others (e.g. dput()
	and print.default()) could return visibly when this was not
	intended.

    o	Several primitives such as dim() were not checking the number
	of arguments supplied before method dispatch.

    o	Tracing of primitive functions has been corrected.  It should
	now be the case that tracing either works or is not allowed
	for all primitive functions. (Problems remain if you make a
	primitive into a generic when it is being traced.  To be fixed
	later.)

    o	max.col() now omits infinite values in determining the
	relative tolerance.

    o	R CMD Sweave and R CMD Stangle now respond to --help and --version
	like other utilities.

    o	.libPaths() adds only existing directories (as it was
	documented to, but could add non-directories).

    o	setIs() and setClassUnion() failed to find some existing
	subclasses and produced spurious warnings, now fixed.

    o	data.frame() ignored 'row.names' for 0-column data frames, and
	no longer treats an explicit row.names=NULL differently from
	the default value.

    o	identical() looked at the internal structure of the
	'row.names' attribute, and not the value visible at R level.

    o	abline(reg) now also correctly works with intercept-only lm
	models, and abline() warns more when it's called illogically.

    o	warning() was truncating messages at
	getOption("warning.length") - 1 (not as documented), with no
	indication.  It now appends '[... truncated]'.

    o	Stangle/Sweave were throwing spurious warnings if options
	'result' or 'strip.white' were unset.

    o	all.equal() was ignoring 'check.attributes' for list and
	expression targets, and checking only attributes on raw vectors.
	Logical vectors were being compared as if they were numeric,
	(with a mean difference being quoted).

    o	Calculating the number of significant digits in a number was
	itself subject to rounding errors for digits >= 16.  The
	calculation has been changed to err on the side of slightly
	too few significant digits (but still at least 15) rather than
	far too many.  (An example is print(1.001, digits=16).)

    o	unlink() on Unix-alikes failed for paths containing spaces.

    o	substr() and friends treated NA 'start' or 'stop' incorrectly.

    o	merge(x, y, all.y = TRUE) would sometimes incorrectly return
	logical columns for columns only in y when there were no
	common rows.

    o	read.table(fn, col.names=) on an empty file returned NULL
	columns, rather than logical(0) columns (which is what results
	from reading a file with just a header).

    o	grid.[xy]axis(label=logical(0)) failed.

    o	expression() was unnecessarily duplicating arguments.

    o	as.expression(<list>) returned a single-element expression
	vector, which was not compatible with S: it now copies lists
	element-by-element.

    o	supsmu(periodic = TRUE) could segfault.  (PR#9502, detection
	and patch by Bill Dunlap.)

    o	pmax/pmin called with only logical arguments did not coerce to
	numeric, although they were documented to do so (as max/min
	do).

    o	methods() did not know that cbind() and rbind() are internally
	generic.

    o	dim(x) <- NULL removed the names of x, but this was always
	undocumented.  It is not clear that it is desirable but it is
	S-compatible and relied on, so is now documented.

    o	which(x, arr.ind = TRUE) did not return a matrix (as
	documented) if 'x' was an array of length 0.

    o	C-level duplicate() truncated CHARSXPs with embedded nuls.

    o	Partial matching of attributes was not working as documented
	in some cases if there were more than two partial matches or
	if "names" was involved.

    o	data(package=character(0)) was not looking in ./data as
	documented.

    o	summary.mlm() failed if some response names were "" (as can
	easily happen if cbind() is used).

    o	The postscript() and pdf() drivers shared an encoding list
	but used slightly different formats.  This caused problems if
	both were used with the same non-default encoding in the same
	session.  (PR#9517)

    o	The data editor was not allowing Inf, NA and NaN to be entered
	in numerical columns.  It was intended to differentiate
	between empty cells and NAs, but did not do so: it now does
	so for strings.

    o	supsmu() could segfault if all cases had non-finite values.
	(PR#9519)

    o	plnorm(x, lower.tail=FALSE) was returning the wrong tail for
	x <= 0.  (PR#9520)

    o	which.min() would not report a minimum of +Inf, and
	analogously for which.max().  (PR#9522)

    o	'R CMD check' could fail with an unhelpful error when checking
	Rd files for errors if there was only one file and that had a
	serious error.  (PR#9459)

    o	try() has been reimplemented using tryCatch() to solve two
	problems with the original implementation: (i) try() would run
	non-NULL options("error") expressions for errors within a try, and
	(ii) try() would catch user interrupts.

    o	str(obj) could fail when obj contained a dendrogram.

    o	Using <data frame>[, <last column>] <- NULL failed (PR#9565)

    o	choose(n, k) could return non-integer values for integer n and
	small k on some platforms.

    o	nclass.scott(x) and nclass.FD(x) no longer return NaN when var(x)
	or IQR(x) (respectively) is zero.

	hist() now allows breaks = 1 (which the above patch will
	return), but not breaks = Inf (which gave an obscure error).

    o	strptime("%j") now also works for the first days of Feb-Dec.
	(PR#9577)

    o	write.table() now recovers better if 'file' is an unopened
	connection.  (It used to open it for both the column names and
	the data.)

    o	Fixed bug in mosaicplot(sort=) introduced by undocumented
	change in R 2.4.1 (changeset r39655).

    o	contr.treatment(n=0) failed with a spurious error message.
	(It remains an error.)

    o	as.numeric() was incorrectly documented: it is identical to
	as.double.

    o	jitter(rep(-1, 3)) gave NaNs. (PR#9580)

    o	max.col() was not random for a row of zeroes. (PR#9542)

    o	ansari.test(conf.int=TRUE, exact=FALSE) failed.

    o	trace() now works on S3 registered methods, by modifying the
	version in the S3 methods table.

    o	rep(length=1, each=0) segfaulted.

    o	postscript() could overflow a buffer if used with a long
	'command' argument.

    o	The internal computations to copy complete attribute lists did
	not copy the flag marking S4 objects, so the copies no longer
	behaved like S4 objects.

    o	The C code of nlminb() was altering a variable without
	duplicating it.  (This did not affect nlminb() but would have
	if the code was called from a different wrapper.)

    o	smooth(kind = "3RS3R") (the current default) used .C(DUP =
	FALSE) but altered its input argument.  (This was masked by
	duplication in as.double.)

    o	The signature for the predefined S4 method for as.character()
	was missing '...' .

    o	readBin(<raw vector>) could read beyond the end of the vector
	when size-changing was involved.

    o	The C entry point PrintValue (designed to emulate auto-printing)
	would not find show() for use on S4 objects, and did not have
	the same search path (for show(), print() and print() methods)
	as auto-printing.  Also, auto-printing and print() of S4
	objects would fail to find 'show' if the methods namespace was
	loaded but the package was not attached (or otherwise not in
	the search path).

    o	print() (and auto-printing) now recognize S4 objects even when
	'methods' is not loaded, and print a short summary rather than
	dump the internal structure.

    o	Sweave and Stangle had problems due to partial matching of code
	chunk names when run with split=TRUE.

    o	install.packages() on a source package now ensures that
	R CMD INSTALL sees the same library search path as
	install.packages() did when computing dependencies.

    o	density() now ensures its 'y' values are non-negative. (PR#8876)

    o	is.finite() and is.infinite() (and many other primitives)
	are not internally generic and so do not support S4 methods,
	which can no longer be set. (PR#7951)

    o	nls(algorithm = "port") now accepts a list 'start' argument,
	as for the other methods (and as documented).

    o	Standard errors from the "ar" method of predict() could be
	wrong for the last p predictions for models near
	non-stationarity. (PR#9614)




-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Øster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark          Ph:  (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)                  FAX: (+45) 35327907




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