[Rd] *s behaviour (PR#6633)

[berwin at maths.uwa.edu.au]

Dear all,

While showing some commands of R to my students, I came across the
following behaviour of * which surprised me.

> set.seed(20)                    # to make it reproducible
                                  # create some objects
> z <- matrix(rnorm(6), ncol=2)   # 3x2 matrix
> x1 <- rnorm(3)                  # vector of length 3
> y1 <- rnorm(4)                  # vector of length 4
> y2 <- matrix(y1, ncol=1)        # 4x1 matrix

> z*x1                            # works fine, as expected

> x1*y1                           # warning message, as expected
[1] 1.60535635 0.01749800 0.06943188 1.81510895
Warning message: 
longer object length
	is not a multiple of shorter object length in: x1 * y1 

> z*y2                            # also expected
Error in z * y2 : non-conformable arrays

> z*y1                            # no warning, no error?
            [,1]        [,2]
[1,] -0.64591924  0.83703776
[2,]  0.01179780  0.24808611
[3,] -0.26850220 -0.01146923

> x1*y2                           # no warning, no error?
           [,1]
[1,] 1.60535635
[2,] 0.01749800
[3,] 0.06943188
[4,] 1.81510895

I was expecting warning messages in the last examples.

But after consulting the help page (?*) and the 'R Language
definition', I am not sure what I should have expected. :)

The help page says that "[t]hese binary operators perform arithmetic
on vector objects" and "[o]bjects such as arrays [...] can be operated
on this way provided they are conformable".  The R Language definition
states "a vector is not the same as a one-dimensional array since the
latter has a dim attribute of length one, whereas the former has no
dim attribute".

So technically, I guess, the last two examples are operations between
a vector object and an array object.  And the help page doesn't seem
to say anything about this situation. 

I have a vague memory that there as been discussion on this subject in
the (distant?) past, but unfortunately I don't remember what behaviour
was deemed to be sensible.  I also couldn't find any recent posts
about this on the bug archives.

Thus, after careful consideration I decided to fill out this bug
report since I came to the conclusion that for these examples either
a) both operands should have been treated as a vector objects and a
   warning message should have been issued; or
b) the documentation should make it clear that the warning is not
   issued if one operates on a vector object and an array object.

My apologies if this was already reported and I missed it in the bugs
archives. 

Cheers,

        Berwin



--please do not edit the information below--

Version:
 platform = i686-pc-linux-gnu
 arch = i686
 os = linux-gnu
 system = i686, linux-gnu
 status = 
 major = 1
 minor = 8.1
 year = 2003
 month = 11
 day = 21
 language = R

Search Path:
 .GlobalEnv, package:methods, package:ctest, package:mva, package:modreg, package:nls, package:ts, Autoloads, package:base