[Rd] is.numeric (NA + NA) is TRUE, should be FALSE (PR#8745)

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 4/4/2006 6:38 PM, cheryl fillekes wrote:
> So this is perfectly consistent then:
> 
>>  A <- NA
>> B <- NA+NA
>> B
> [1] NA
>> A
> [1] NA

A and B both print as NA, but they are stored differently.  A is 
logical, B is numeric.  You'll also see this in the following tests:

 > identical(A, A)
[1] TRUE
 > identical(A, B)
[1] FALSE



>> is.numeric (A)
> [1] FALSE
>> is.numeric (B)
> [1] TRUE
> 
> And the test based on value rather than type would be:
> 
>> !is.na(A)
> [1] FALSE
>> !is.na(B)
> [1] FALSE

Yes, that works.

Duncan Murdoch

> 
> 
> 
> On 4/4/06, Antonio, Fabio Di Narzo <antonio.fabio at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2006/4/4, cfillekes at gmail.com <cfillekes at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> Full_Name: c fillekes
>>> Version: Version 2.2.1  (2005-12-20 r36812)
>>> OS: Gentoo Linux kernel 2.6.12
>>> Submission from: (NULL) (129.116.71.233)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "Not Available" is of course not a numeric:
>>> R
>>>
>>>> is.numeric (NA)
>>> [1] FALSE
>>
>> In the help you can read:
>> "
>>  'NA' is a logical constant of length 1 which contains a missing
>>      value indicator.  'NA' can be freely coerced to any other vector
>>      type except raw.
>> "
>> And in fact:
>>
>>> storage.mode(NA)
>> [1] "logical"
>>> storage.mode(NA+0)
>> [1] "double"
>>> storage.mode(as.numeric(NA))
>> [1] "double"
>>> storage.mode(as.character(NA))
>> [1] "character"
>>
>> So in
>> NA+NA
>> the logical is automatically coerced to a numerical value, and is.numericreturns TRUE, as expected.
>>
>>
>> But for some reason, all arithmetic operations on NA's are
>>> in fact numeric, even if it's with other NA's.
>>>
>>>
>>>> is.numeric (NA+NA)
>>> [1] TRUE
>>>> is.numeric (NA^2)
>>> [1] TRUE
>>>> is.numeric (NA-NA)
>>> [1] TRUE
>>>> is.numeric (NA*NA)
>>> [1] TRUE
>>>> is.numeric (NA/NA)
>>> [1] TRUE
>>> This is not the expected thing.
>>
>> I think this is the expected thing.
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>
>>
>> Antonio, Fabio Di Narzo.
>>
> 
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