[R] ave(x, y, FUN=length) produces character output when x is character

[Mike Miller]

On Thu, 25 Dec 2014, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

> On 25/12/2014 1:57 PM, Mike Miller wrote:
>
>> I do think I get what is going on with this, but why should I buy into 
>> this conceptualization?  Why is it better to say that a matrix *is* a 
>> vector than to say that a matrix *contains* a vector?  The latter seems 
>> to be the more common way of thinking but such things.
>
> "More common"?  The better way to think of this is as a class hierarchy. 
> A matrix is a particular kind of vector (the kind that has a dimension 
> attribute).  A matrix has all the properties that a vector has, plus 
> some more.
>
> Would you say a cube contains a polygon, or a cube is a polygon?

I would say that the sides of the cube are polygons, so I guess a cube 
"contains" six polygons, but "is" would be wrong because a cube is a 
polyhedron, not a polygon.  A cube is not a polygon.

I get your point about hierarchy.

Someone else showed me that setting the dim attribute to NULL changes the 
matrix into a vector so that is.vector() is TRUE.

Mike