[Rd] substring() and propagation of names

Hervé Pagès hpages at fhcrc.org
Fri Dec 13 10:07:41 CET 2013


Hi,

In R < 3.0.0, we used to get:

   > substring(c(A="abcdefghij", B="123456789"), 2, 6:2)
         A       B       A       B       A
   "bcdef"  "2345"   "bcd"    "23"     "b"

But in R >= 3.0.0, we get:

   > substring(c(A="abcdefghij", B="123456789"), 2, 6:2)
   [1] "bcdef" "2345"  "bcd"   "23"    "b"

The names are not propagated anymore.

Is this an intended change or a bug? I can't find anything about
this in the NEWS file. The man page for substring() in R >= 3.0.0
still states:

   Value:

      ...

      For ‘substring’, a character vector of length the longest of the
      arguments.  This will have names taken from ‘x’ (if it has any
      after coercion, repeated as needed), and other attributes copied
      from ‘x’ if it is the longest of the arguments).

Also note that the first argument of substring() is 'text' not 'x'.

Thanks,
H.

-- 
Hervé Pagès

Program in Computational Biology
Division of Public Health Sciences
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
1100 Fairview Ave. N, M1-B514
P.O. Box 19024
Seattle, WA 98109-1024

E-mail: hpages at fhcrc.org
Phone:  (206) 667-5791
Fax:    (206) 667-1319



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