[Rd] Undefined behavior of head() and tail() with n = 0

[Florent Angly]

Hi all,

The documentation for head() and tail() describes the behavior of
these generic functions when n is strictly positive (n > 0) and
strictly negative (n < 0). How these functions work when given a zero
value is not defined.

Both GNU command-line utilities head and tail behave differently with +0 and -0:
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/head.1.html
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/tail.1.html

Since R supports signed zeros (1/+0 != 1/-0) and the R head() and
tail() functions are modeled after their GNU counterparts, I would
expect the R functions to distinguish between +0 and -0

> tail(1:5, n=0)
integer(0)
> tail(1:5, n=1)
[1] 5
> tail(1:5, n=2)
[1] 4 5

> tail(1:5, n=-2)
[1] 3 4 5
> tail(1:5, n=-1)
[1] 2 3 4 5
> tail(1:5, n=-0)
integer(0)  # expected 1:5

> head(1:5, n=0)
integer(0)
> head(1:5, n=1)
[1] 1
> head(1:5, n=2)
[1] 1 2

> head(1:5, n=-2)
[1] 1 2 3
> head(1:5, n=-1)
[1] 1 2 3 4
> head(1:5, n=-0)
integer(0)  # expected 1:5

For both head() and tail(), I expected 1:5 as output but got
integer(0). I obtained similar results using a data.frame and a
function as x argument.

An easy fix would be to explicitly state in the documentation what n =
0 does, and that there is no practical difference between -0 and +0.
However, in my eyes, the better approach would be implement support
for -0 and document it. What do you think?

Best,

Florent


PS/ My sessionInfo() gives:
R version 3.3.2 (2016-10-31)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 7 x64 (build 7601) Service Pack 1

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=German_Switzerland.1252
LC_CTYPE=German_Switzerland.1252
LC_MONETARY=German_Switzerland.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
 LC_TIME=German_Switzerland.1252

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base