[Rd] proposed change to 'sample'

[Peter Dalgaard]

Hadley Wickham wrote:
>> I would be more inclined to make sampling from a vector the normal case,
>> and default x to say 1:max(n, size), forcing users to say sample(n=5) if
>> sampling from x=1:5 is desired. This could be a manageable change; the
>> deprecation sequence is a bit painful to think through, though.
> 
> Don't we already have sample.int for that case?
> 
> Hadley
> 

For the 2nd case, yes, but I was aiming at getting sample(x) ==
x[sample.int(length(x))] also in the length 1 case, removing the
ambiguity. This would obviously break some code, but I'd expect not all
that much. However, it cannot be changed in one go, we'd need to go
through a sequence where we (e.g.)

1. warn about length(x)==1
2. say that length(x)==1 is deprecated
3. have length(x)==1 throw an error
4. wait....
5. give length(x)==1 a new meaning

-- 
Peter Dalgaard
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Phone: (+45)38153501
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com