[Rd] nrow(rbind(character(), character())) returns 2 (as documented but very unintuitive, IMHO)

[Gabriel Becker]

Hi Herve,

Inline.



On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 4:45 PM Pages, Herve <hpages using fredhutch.org> wrote:

> Hi Gabe,
>
>    ncol(data.frame(aa=c("a", "b", "c"), AA=c("A", "B", "C")))
>    # [1] 2
>
>    ncol(data.frame(aa="a", AA="A"))
>    # [1] 2
>
>    ncol(data.frame(aa=character(0), AA=character(0)))
>    # [1] 2
>
>    ncol(cbind(aa=c("a", "b", "c"), AA=c("A", "B", "C")))
>    # [1] 2
>
>    ncol(cbind(aa="a", AA="A"))
>    # [1] 2
>
>    ncol(cbind(aa=character(0), AA=character(0)))
>    # [1] 2
>
>    nrow(rbind(aa=c("a", "b", "c"), AA=c("A", "B", "C")))
>    # [1] 2
>
>    nrow(rbind(aa="a", AA="A"))
>    # [1] 2
>
>    nrow(rbind(aa=character(0), AA=character(0)))
>    # [1] 2
>

Sure, but

> nrow(rbind(aa = c("a", "b", "c"), AA = c("a", "b", "c")))

[1] 2

> nrow(rbind(aa = c("a", "b", "c"), AA = "a"))

[1] 2

> nrow(rbind(aa = c("a", "b", "c"), AA = character()))
[1] 1

So even if I ultimately "lose"  this debate (which really wouldn't shock
me, even if R-core did agree with me there's backwards compatibility to
consider), you have to concede that the current behavior is more
complicated than the above is acknowledging.

By rights of the invariance that you and Hadley are advocating,  as far as
I understand it, the last should give 2 rows, one of which is all NAs,
rather than giving only one row as it currently does (and, I assume?,
always has).

So there are two different behavior patterns that could coherently (and
internally-consistently) be generalized to apply to the  rbind(character(),
character()) case, not just one. I'm making the case that the other one
(that length 0 vectors do not add rows because they don't contain data)
would be equally valid, and to N>1 people, at least equally intuitive.

Best,
~G

>
> hmmm... not sure why ncol(cbind(aa=character(0), AA=character(0))) or
> nrow(rbind(aa=character(0), AA=character(0))) should do anything
> different from what they do.
>
> In my experience, and more generally speaking, the desire to treat
> 0-length vectors as a special case that deviates from the
> non-zero-length case has never been productive.
>
> H.
>
>
> On 5/16/19 13:17, Gabriel Becker wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Apologies if this has been asked before (a quick google didn't  find it
> for
> > me),and I know this is a case of behaving as documented but its so
> > unintuitive (to me at least) that I figured I'd bring it up here anyway.
> I
> > figure its probably going to not be changed,  but I'm happy to submit a
> > patch if this is something R-core feels can/should change.
> >
> > So I recently got bitten by the fact that
> >
> >> nrow(rbind(character(), character()))
> > [1] 2
> >
> >
> > I was checking whether the result of an rbind call had more than one row,
> > and that unexpected returned true, causing all sorts of shenanigans
> > downstream as I'm sure you can imagine.
> >
> > Now I know that from ?rbind
> >
> > For ‘cbind’ (‘rbind’), vectors of zero length (including ‘NULL’)
> >>       are ignored unless the result would have zero rows (columns), for
> >>
> >>       S compatibility.  (Zero-extent matrices do not occur in S3 and are
> >>
> >>       not ignored in R.)
> >>
> > But there's a couple of things here. First, for the rowbind  case this
> > reads as "if there would be zero columns,  the vectors will not be
> > ignored". This wording implies to me that not ignoring the vectors is a
> > remedy to the "problem" of the potential for a zero-column return, but
> > thats not the case.  The result still has 0 columns, it just does not
> also
> > have zero rows. So even if the behavior is not changed, perhaps this
> > wording can be massaged for clarity?
> >
> > The other issue, which I admit is likely a problem with my intuition, but
> > which I don't think I'm alone in having, is that even if I can't have a
> 0x0
> > matrix (which is what I'd prefer) I would have expected/preferred a 1x0
> > matrix, the reasoning being that if we must avoid a 0x0 return value, we
> > would do the  minimum required to avoid, which is to not ignore the first
> > length 0 vector, to ensure a non-zero-extent matrix, but then ignore the
> > remaining ones as they contain information for 0 new rows.
> >
> > Of course I can program around this now that I know the behavior, but
> > again, its so unintuitive (even for someone with a fairly well developed
> > intuition for R's sometimes "quirky" behavior) that I figured I'd bring
> it
> > up.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > Best,
> > ~G
> >
> >       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> >
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__stat.ethz.ch_mailman_listinfo_r-2Ddevel&d=DwIFaQ&c=eRAMFD45gAfqt84VtBcfhQ&r=BK7q3XeAvimeWdGbWY_wJYbW0WYiZvSXAJJKaaPhzWA&m=WzRf-6PuyYeprM0v55lLX2U-_hYGf__5yf3h6JNdJH0&s=nn76KQtp4viR66768zoSNcH7WpG77Pp8LyhOwYOs674&e=
>
> --
> 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 using fredhutch.org
> Phone:  (206) 667-5791
> Fax:    (206) 667-1319
>
>

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]