[R] Why does substr<- truncate and not replace...

[Peter Dalgaard BSA]

Thomas Vogels <tov at ece.cmu.edu> writes:

> ... when the replacement string is shorter than the portion of the
> string to be replaced?
> 
> The documentation to substr (in R 1.3.1) gives me:
> 
>      If the portion to be replaced is longer than the replacement
>      string, then only the portion the length of the string is
>      replaced.
> 
> And so I try:
> 
> R> x <- "abcdef"
> R> substr(x,2,3) <- "xy" #ok
> R> x
> [1] "axydef"
> R> substr(x,2,3) <- "w" #ko
> R> x
> [1] "aw"
> 
> hmm, I would have expected "awdef".  Am I reading the docs wrong?  (Or
> am I just blinded to expect this string because that's what Perl would do?)
> 
> Thanks!
>   -tom

Looks like a bit of a bug. I bet the \0 terminator gets copied in from
the replacement.

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907
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