[R] are arithmetic comparison operators binary?

[Wacek Kusnierczyk]

Martin Maechler wrote:
>>>>>> "WK" == Wacek Kusnierczyk <Waclaw.Marcin.Kusnierczyk at idi.ntnu.no>
>>>>>>     on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:06:32 +0100 writes:
>>>>>>             
>
> Thank you, Wacek, 
> though .. "wrong mailing list" 
>   

apologies.  i was actually asking for explanation, assuming that it
might be my misunderstanding, rather than reporting a bug.

>     WK> the man page for relational operators (see, e.g., ?'<') says:
>     WK> "
>     WK> Binary operators which allow the comparison of values in atomic vectors.
>
>     WK> Arguments:
>
>     WK> x, y: atomic vectors, symbols, calls, or other objects for which
>     WK> methods have been written.
>     WK> "
>
>     WK> it is somewhat surprizing that the following works:
>
>     WK> '<'(1)
>     WK> # logical(0)
>
>     WK> '<'()
>     WK> # logical(0)
>
>     WK> '<'(1,2,3)
>     WK> # TRUE
>
> a bit surprising (sic!), indeed, even for me.
> Thanks for your notice and report!
>   

you're welcome. 

shouldn't the tests have captured it?  i think you should have a check
for every feature following from the docs.  plus those undocumented, but
assumed by the developers.

> If you'd looked a bit in the sources, you'd seen that they
> really are supposed to be binary only.
>   

it wouldn't be nonsensical to let them be of arbitrary arity (in a
well-documented manner), though it might confuse users.

> A very small change in the sources does accomplish this, passes
> the standard checks (and I cannot imagine reasonable code that
> would have relied on the more lenient behavior), so
> this will have changed in one of the next versions of R-devel.
>   

thanks.

just a question (i haven't checked the sources, maybe i should):  what
is it that happens when one of the operators is called with n = 0 or 1
argument?  how does it come up with logical(0) rather than NA?

cheers,
vQ