[Rd] paste(character(0), collapse="", recycle0=FALSE) should be ""

[Hervé Pagès]

Totally agree with that.

H.

On 5/15/20 10:34, William Dunlap via R-devel wrote:
> I agree: paste(collapse="something", ...) should always return a single
> character string, regardless of the value of recycle0.  This would be
> similar to when there are no non-NULL arguments to paste; collapse="."
> gives a single empty string and collapse=NULL gives a zero long character
> vector.
>> paste()
> character(0)
>> paste(collapse=", ")
> [1] ""
> 
> Bill Dunlap
> TIBCO Software
> wdunlap tibco.com
> 
> 
> On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 9:56 PM suharto_anggono--- via R-devel <
> r-devel using r-project.org> wrote:
> 
>> Without 'collapse', 'paste' pastes (concatenates) its arguments
>> elementwise (separated by 'sep', " " by default). New in R devel and R
>> patched, specifying recycle0 = FALSE makes mixing zero-length and
>> nonzero-length arguments results in length zero. The result of paste(n,
>> "th", sep = "", recycle0 = FALSE) always have the same length as 'n'.
>> Previously, the result is still as long as the longest argument, with the
>> zero-length argument like "". If all og the arguments have length zero,
>> 'recycle0' doesn't matter.
>>
>> As far as I understand, 'paste' with 'collapse' as a character string is
>> supposed to put together elements of a vector into a single character
>> string. I think 'recycle0' shouldn't change it.
>>
>> In current R devel and R patched, paste(character(0), collapse = "",
>> recycle0 = FALSE) is character(0). I think it should be "", like
>> paste(character(0), collapse="").
>>
>> paste(c("4", "5"), "th", sep = "", collapse = ", ", recycle0 = FALSE)
>> is
>> "4th, 5th".
>> paste(c("4"     ), "th", sep = "", collapse = ", ", recycle0 = FALSE)
>> is
>> "4th".
>> I think
>> paste(c(        ), "th", sep = "", collapse = ", ", recycle0 = FALSE)
>> should be
>> "",
>> not character(0).
>>
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-- 
Hervé Pagès

Program in Computational Biology
Division of Public Health Sciences
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
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