

On Sep 10, 2013, at 18:38, Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek@r-project.org> wrote:

> 
> On Sep 10, 2013, at 12:56 PM, Sam Steingold wrote:
> 
>>> * Dirk Eddelbuettel <rqq@qrovna.bet> [2013-09-10 10:21:33 -0500]:
>>> 
>>> On 10 September 2013 at 10:32, Sam Steingold wrote:
>>> | (summary.default): show the vector length in addition to quantiles
>>> | 
>>> | 
>>> | diff -u -i -p -F '^(def' -b -w -B /home/sds/src/R-3.0.1/src/library/base/R/summary.R.old /home/sds/src/R-3.0.1/src/library/base/R/summary.R
>>> | --- /home/sds/src/R-3.0.1/src/library/base/R/summary.R.old    2013-03-05 18:02:33.000000000 -0500
>>> | +++ /home/sds/src/R-3.0.1/src/library/base/R/summary.R    2013-09-10 10:19:02.682946339 -0400
>>> | @@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ summary.default <-
>>> |      qq <- stats::quantile(object)
>>> |      qq <- signif(c(qq[1L:3L], mean(object), qq[4L:5L]), digits)
>>> |      names(qq) <- c("Min.", "1st Qu.", "Median", "Mean", "3rd Qu.", "Max.")
>>> | +  qq <- c(qq,"Length" = length(object))
>>> |      if(any(nas))
>>> |          c(qq, "NA's" = sum(nas))
>>> |      else qq
>>> | 
>>> | Diff finished.  Tue Sep 10 10:19:40 2013
>>> 
>>> Base R functions are rarely modified; others may have expectations on
>>> summary() returning the six values it returns.
>> 
>> Note that summary sometimes returns 5 values (when there no "NA's").
>> It is clearly wrong to rely on the details of the return value of a UI function.
> 
> .. except that summary() is not a UI function. It is used to create summary *objects*, not some UI output. Although sometimes users like to print such summary objects, that is not the task of summary(). There are quite common programmatic uses of summary() -- one prominent one that comes to my mind is in conjunction with connections.
> (Not that any of this has anything to do with the original question ... )

As Simon surely knows but others perhaps not:

http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#How-should-I-write-summary-methods_003f

MW


> 
> 
>>> Many alternatives are available, including describe in Hmisc which
>>> returns the count you suggest, and a count of missingness.
>> 
>> Such a minor issue hardly justifies installing a whole new package.
>> (but thanks for the suggestion!)
>> 
>> -- 
>> Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on Ubuntu 13.04 (raring) X 11.0.11303000
>> http://www.childpsy.net/ http://www.memritv.org http://palestinefacts.org
>> http://www.PetitionOnline.com/tap12009/ http://pmw.org.il http://dhimmi.com
>> WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
>> 
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