[R] type conversion

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 04/03/2012 22:26, Petr Savicky wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 04, 2012 at 03:18:33PM -0600, Matyas Sustik wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I am confused by a type conversion happening against my intent.
>>
>> In an R script I allocate a matrix X, and I pass it to a C function
>> by using
>>
>> tmp -<  .C(..., as.double(X),...).
>>
>> I use as.double() because I read that it makes sure that the
>> parameter passing is correct.
>>
>> I return the matrix from the R script using:
>>
>> return (list(..., X = tmp$X, ...))
>>
>> The returned value is not a matrix but a flat vector.
>>
>> I must not understand something fundamental that is happening
>> here.
>
> Hi.
>
> No, this is correct. See section 5.2 Interface functions .C and
> .Fortran in R-exts.pdf for the list of C types. There is int * and
> double *, which are vectors. Your R code should restore the dim
> attribute after the return from C code, for example using matrix()
> with appropriate nrow and ncol parameters.

'No, this is not correct'.  If you want to use a double matrix in .C or 
.Fortran, use

storage.mode(X) <- "double"

There are quite a few examples in R's own code, e.g. lm.fit.

> If you want to pass really a matrix, use .Call, which is more
> powerful.

But handling conversion in .Call is a lot trickier (especially if you 
want to dispatch methods), so e.g. det() uses storage.mode at R level 
before .Call.

> Hope this helps.
>
> Petr Savicky.
>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
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