[R] A slight trap in read.table/read.csv.

[Rolf Turner]

On 9/03/2010, at 11:17 AM, Mike Prager wrote:

> Rolf Turner <r.turner at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>> 
>> I solved the problem by putting in a colClasses argument in my
>> call to read.csv().  But I really think that the read functions
>> are being too clever by half here.  If field entries are surrounded
>> by quotes, shouldn't they be left as character?  Even if they are
>> all F's and T's?
>> 
>> Furthermore using F's and T's to represent TRUE's and FALSE's is
>> bad practice anyway.  Since FALSE and TRUE are reserved words it
>> would make sense for the read function to assume that a field is
>> logical if it consists entirely of these words.  But T's and F's
>> .... I don't think so.
>> 
>> I would argue that this behaviour should be changed.  I can see no
>> downside to such a change.
>> 
> 
> I agree with you, Rolf, that this is horrid behavior. It is such
> automatic devices that have made people hate (e.g.) Microsoft
> Word with a passion. 
> 
> Yet, in R this is a designed-in bug (e.g., feature) that
> probably can't be changed without making some legacy code not
> work. But at least, T and F could be removed soon as synonms for
> TRUE and FALSE. We have seen that "_" was removed as an
> assignment operator, and the world did not crumble. The use of T
> and F is no less error-prone, and possibly more.

	I would definitely support the removal of the use of T
	and F for TRUE and FALSE.  Some code would break, but
	it would be easy to trace the source of the problem and
	easy to fix.
> 
> The only immediate solution to this accretion of overly clever
> behavior would be for someone to write new functions (say,
> Read.csv) that didn't do all those conversions behind the
> scenes. I'm not about to do that. Are you?


	NFL!!!

		cheers,

			Rolf

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