[R] seq curiosity

[Henrik Bengtsson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> [mailto:owner-r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch]On Behalf Of Peter Dalgaard BSA
> Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 11:18 AM
> To: Uwe Ligges
> Cc: jaitchis at hwy.com.au; r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] seq curiosity
>
>
> Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de> writes:
>
> > John Aitchison wrote:
> > >
> > > Is this a bug or a feature?
> > >
> > > > seq(0:4)  # colon
> > > [1] 1 2 3 4 5
> > > > 0:4
> > > [1] 0 1 2 3 4
> > > > seq(0,4)
> > > [1] 0 1 2 3 4
> > >
> > > I am aware that the first usage is incorrect, but I was surprised that
> > > I did not get any sort of syntax error
> >
> > It's a feature! It's mentioned in the help page. If you provide a vector
> > (length > 1) as an argument to seq(), seq() is smart enough to detect
> > the case "seq(along)":
> >
> >  along <- 0:4
> >  seq(along)
> >
> > The same should happen for
> >
> >  along <- LETTERS[10:14]
> >  along
> >  seq(along)
> >
> > Everything works perfectly!
>
> Well, almost. The case where x is numeric and length(x) == 1 is the
> source of some subtle and nasty bugs. Try a couple of iterations of
>
>  x <- rnorm(20, sd=100) ; seq(x[x>100])
>
> and you'll see the problem.
>
> However, we probably have to retain it for compatibility.

...which is actually no problem if one is more explicit:

  x <- rnorm(20, sd=100) ; seq(along=x[x>100])

(as most of you already know)

Henrik Bengtsson

Dept. of Mathematical Statistics @ Centre for Mathematical Sciences
Lund Institute of Technology/Lund University, Sweden (+2h UTC)
Office: P316, +46 46 222 9611 (phone), +46 46 222 4623 (fax)
h b @ m a t h s . l t h . s e, http://www.maths.lth.se/bioinformatics/

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