[Rd] outer not applying a constant function

[William Dunlap]

> Or is this a bad idea?

I don't like the proposal.  I have seen code like the following (in
fact, I have written such code, where I had forgotten a function was
not vectorized) where the error would have been discovered much later
if outer() didn't catch it.

  > outer(1:3, 11:13, sum)
  Error in outer(1:3, 11:13, sum) :
    dims [product 9] do not match the length of object [1]

Bill Dunlap
TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com


On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 6:36 AM, Martin Maechler
<maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
>>>>>> Gebhardt, Albrecht <Albrecht.Gebhardt at aau.at>
>>>>>>     on Sun, 19 Mar 2017 09:14:56 +0000 writes:
>
>     > Hi,
>     > the function outer can not apply a constant function as in the last line of the following example:
>
>     >> xg <- 1:4
>     >> yg <- 1:4
>     >> fxyg <- outer(xg, yg, function(x,y) x*y)
>     >> fconstg <- outer(xg, yg, function(x,y) 1.0)
>     > Error in outer(xg, yg, function(x, y) 1) :
>     > dims [product 16] do not match the length of object [1]
>
>     > Of course there are simpler ways to construct a constant matrix, that is not my point.
>
>     > It happens for me in the context of generating matrices of partial derivatives, and if on of these partial derivatives happens to be constant it fails.
>
>     > So e.g this works:
>
>     > library(Deriv)
>     > f <- function(x,y) (x-1.5)*(y-1)*(x-1.8)+(y-1.9)^2*(x-1.1)^3
>     > fx <- Deriv(f,"x")
>     > fy <- Deriv(f,"y")
>     > fxy <- Deriv(Deriv(f,"y"),"x")
>     > fxx <- Deriv(Deriv(f,"x"),"x")
>     > fyy <- Deriv(Deriv(f,"y"),"y")
>
>     > fg   <- outer(xg,yg,f)
>     > fxg  <- outer(xg,yg,fx)
>     > fyg  <- outer(xg,yg,fy)
>     > fxyg <- outer(xg,yg,fxy)
>     > fxxg <- outer(xg,yg,fxx)
>     > fyyg <- outer(xg,yg,fyy)
>
>     > And with
>
>     > f <- function(x,y) x+y
>
>     > it stops working. Of course I can manually fix this for that special case, but thats not my point. I simply thought "outer" should be able to handle constant functions.
>
> ?outer   clearly states that  FUN  needs to be vectorized
>
> but  function(x,y) 1    is not.
>
> It is easy to solve by wrapping the function in Vectorize(.):
>
>> x <- 1:3; y <- 1:4
>
>> outer(x,y, function(x,y) 1)
> Error in dim(robj) <- c(dX, dY) :
>   dims [product 12] do not match the length of object [1]
>
>> outer(x,y, Vectorize(function(x,y) 1))
>      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]
> [1,]    1    1    1    1
> [2,]    1    1    1    1
> [3,]    1    1    1    1
>
> ----------------
>
> So, your "should"  above must be read in the sense
>
>   "It really would be convenient here and
>    correspond to other "recycling" behavior of R"
>
> and I agree with that, having experienced the same inconvenience
> as you several times in the past.
>
> outer() being a nice R-level function (i.e., no C speed up)
> makes it easy to improve:
>
> Adding something like the line
>
> if(length(robj) == 1L) robj <- rep.int(robj, dX*dY)
>
> before    dim(robj) <- c(dX, dY)   [which gave the error]
>
> would solve the issue and not cost much (in the cases it is unneeded).
>
> Or is this a bad idea?
>
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