[R] The correct way to set an element in a list to NULL? (FAQ is not clear)

[Peng Yu]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Steve Lianoglou
<mailinglist.honeypot at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 11, 2009, at 12:36 PM, Peng Yu wrote:
> [snip]
>
>>>> What seems confusing to me is:
>>>> even 'x[i]<-list(NULL)' and 'x[[i]]<-list(NULL)' are different, why
>>>> x[i]<-NULL and x[[i]]<-NULL are the same?
>>>>
>>>> Shouldn't the meaning of 'x[[i]]<-NULL' be defined as the set the i'th
>>>> element NULL, rather than deleting the i'th element?
>>
>> Do you have any comments on the above question?
>
> Sure.
>
> I think it has something to do with how memory is managed and allocated in R.  You might try to read up on it a bit ...

Which question do you refer by the first 'it'?

I have been asking a good reference on memory management in R. So far,
no one have given me any useful information. Do you have a good
reference?

> In all seriousness tho:
>
> No, I don't really have any comment on that question.
>
> The semantics of what "x[i]<-list(NULL)" vs "x[[i]]<-list(NULL)" seems quite reasonable to me ... I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.
>
> I also can't comment on why x[[i]] <- NULL deletes the element (instead of setting it to NULL, like you want it to) .. it's just the way it is.

The design choice of  x[[i]] <- NULL deleting the element instead of
setting it to NULL might increase the complexity of the code. Suppose
that I set the i'th element of x by calling some_function(), which
never return NULL, the following code is perfectly fine.

x[[i]] <- some_function()

However, when some_function() does return NULL, the i'th element will
be deleted.

In this case I have to do the following. I will have to use the
following code, when I don't know if some_function() can return NULL,
for the sake of safety. As you can see one line of code has been
expanded to 6 lines.

result=some_function()
if(NULL==result) {
  x[i] <- list(NULL)
} else {
  x[[i]] <- some_function()
}

For this reason, x[[i]]<-NULL should be defined as setting it to NULL.

> That having been said. Once you "get it" (and I guess it's on the FAQ for a reason), then you can figure out how to deal with it.
>
> -steve
>
> --
> Steve Lianoglou
> Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology
>  |  Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
>  |  Weill Medical College of Cornell University
> Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact
>
>