[Rd] stopifnot

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Suharto Anggono Suharto Anggono via R-devel 
>>>>>     on Sun, 24 Feb 2019 14:22:48 +0000 writes:

    >> From https://github.com/HenrikBengtsson/Wishlist-for-R/issues/70 :
    > ... and follow up note from 2018-03-15: Ouch... in R-devel, stopifnot() has become yet 4-5 times slower;

    > ...
    > which is due to a complete rewrite using tryCatch() and withCallingHandlers().


    >> From https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2017-May/074256.html , it seems that 'tryCatch' was used to avoid the following example from giving error message with 'eval' call and 'withCallingHandlers' was meant to handle similar case for warning.
    > tst <- function(y) { stopifnot(is.numeric(y)); y+ 1 }
    > try(tst())

    > However,
    > withCallingHandlers(<something>,
    > warning = function(w) { w$call <- cl.i; w })
    > actally has no effect. In current code of function 'stopifnot', 'eval' is used only in handling stopifnot(exprs=) . The warning message from
    > stopifnot(exprs={warning()})
    > has 'eval' call:
    > In eval(cl.i, envir = envir) : 

    > This may work.
    > withCallingHandlers(<something>,
    > warning = function(w) {
    > w$call <- cl.i; warning(w); invokeRestart("muffleWarning") })


    > Current documentation says:
    > Since R version 3.5.0, expressions are evaluated sequentially, and hence evaluation stops as soon as there is a "non-TRUE", asnindicated by the above conceptual equivalence statement. Further, when such an expression signals an error or warning, its conditionCall() no longer contains the full stopifnot call, but just the erroneous expression.

    > I assume that "no longer contains ..." is supposed to be the effect of the use of 'withCallingHandlers' and 'tryCatch' in 'stopifnot'.

    > Actually, "contains the full stopifnot call" is not always the case in R before version 3.5.0. Normally, the call is the "innermost context".

Thank you Suharto, for thinking about these issues and being
constructive, trying to improve the current state.

Unfortunately, I do not quite understand what you are trying to
say here.

The main somewhat recent changes to stopifnot() have been (in
inverse time ordering)

1) Do what the documentation always promised, namely eval() the
   expressions one by one, and stop evaluation as soon as one of
   them is not all(.) TRUE.
   For that reason, the previously used idiom   'list(...)'
   is a no go, as "of course", it evaluates all the expressions in '...'

2) Try to ensure that warning() and stop()/error messages are
   shown the same {as closely as feasible}  to how they are
   shown outside of stopifnot(.)
   	 	  ==> partly the topic of this e-mail.

3) [2.5 years ago:] stopifnot() became smart about all.equal(.) expressions,
  showing the all.equal() string if it was not TRUE:
  In older R versions (<= 3.3.x ?), we had

      > stopifnot(all.equal(pi, 3.1415))
     Error: all.equal(pi, 3.1415) is not TRUE

  where as in R (>= 3.4.0 at least):

      > stopifnot(all.equal(pi, 3.1415)) 
      Error: pi and 3.1415 are not equal:
	Mean relative difference: 2.949255e-05


One example of what I meant with the above documentation ("no
longer contains")  is the following:

In R 3.5.x, 

   > lf <- list(fm = y ~ f(x), osf = ~ sin(x))
   > stopifnot(identical(deparse(lf), deparse(lf, control="all")))
   Warning message:
   In deparse(lf, control = "all") : deparse may be incomplete
   > 

If I change the calling handler to use the
invokeRestart("muffleWarning") which I understand you are
proposing, then the message becomes

   Warning message:
   In identical(deparse(lf, control = "all"), deparse(lf)) :
     deparse may be incomplete

which is less useful as I can no longer see directly which of
the deparse() produced the warning.

    > Example:
    > stopifnot((1:2) + (1:3) > 0)
    > Warning message:
    > In (1:2) + (1:3) :
    >   longer object length is not a multiple of shorter object length

Which is the good answer
(whereas also showing "> 0" in the warning is slightly off).

Again, if I'd use the  ..muffleWarning.. code instead, the above
would change to the worse

     Warning message:
     In (1:2) + (1:3) > 0 :
       longer object length is not a multiple of shorter object length

which "wrongly includes the '> 0'.
So I guess I really don't understand what you are proposing, or
would like to change  ...


    > Example that gives error:
    > stopifnot(is.na(log("a")))
    > R 3.5.0:
    > R 3.3.2:

That's a good one: we want the error message *not to* mention
is.na(.) but just 'log': i.e.,

We'd like  [ R versions <= 3.4.4 ] :

> stopifnot(is.na(log("a")))
Error in log("a") : non-numeric argument to mathematical function

as opposed to [ R version >= 3.5.0 ] :

> stopifnot(is.na(log("a")))
Error in is.na(log("a")) : non-numeric argument to mathematical function

-----------------------------------------

Again, I'm sure I partly failed to understand what you said in
your e-mail and apologize for that.

Of course, I'm happy and glad to discuss improvements to
stopifnot() which improve speed (while retaining important
current functionality)  or also just improve current
functionality
-- e.g. get the "better" error message in the stopifnot(is.na(log("a")))
   example.

High regards,
Martin Maechler