[R] 'autocompletion' of named elements of a list

[Peter Ehlers]

On 2011-03-11 01:07, Ivan Calandra wrote:
> Hi,
>
>   From ?"$", you can see that using [[ instead would do what you're
> looking for. You should read and try to understand the whole help file.
> The reason is that for [[ the default is exact=TRUE, wheareas for $ the
> only possible value is exact=FALSE, which means partial matching if
> possible.
>
> So try A[["aa"]] instead.

Indeed. And, as always, shortcuts come with caveats.
Like using T/F for TRUE/FALSE, use of $ extraction
may be convenient but is best avoided unless you're
sure of its effect.

Peter Ehlers

>
> HTH,
> Ivan
>
> Le 3/11/2011 09:55, Håvard Rue a écrit :
>> I had an obscure bug that boiled down to this ``feature'' in R,
>>
>> Read 3921 items
>>> A = list(aa = 1)
>>> A
>> $aa
>> [1] 1
>>
>>> if (A$a) print("a is there")
>> [1] "a is there"
>>
>> The test appear to check is A$a is TRUE, but what happen is that it
>> auto-complete (silently), and expand to 'A$aa'.
>>
>> The problem was caused by the fact that I had also a element named 'a'
>> which was evaluated to NULL,  like
>>
>>> A$a = NULL
>>> A
>> $aa
>> [1] 1
>>
>>> if (A$a) print("a is there")
>> [1] "a is there"
>>
>> since NULL elements are removed from the list, and that A$a auto-expand
>> to A$aa, my error appeared.
>>
>> To me, this seems not a feature I want in order to have a robust
>> program.
>>
>> Is there any option to turn this ''feature'' off?
>>
>> Best,
>> H
>>
>>
>>
>