[R] some question about vector[-NULL]

Thu Sep 11 08:24:25 CEST 2014

Hi

You still do not disclose important info about details of your functions. However, when you want to perform indexing like you show, you maybe can get rid of NULL and use zero instead.

> a<-1:5
> a[-c(1,3)]
[1] 2 4 5
> a[-c(0,1,3)]
[1] 2 4 5
> a[-c(1,0,3)]
[1] 2 4 5
> a[-c(0,1,0,3,0)]
[1] 2 4 5

However I am almost sure that you are fishing in murky waters and what you do by cycle and fiddling with NULL elements can be achieved by more efficiently.

Regards
Petr

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of PO SU
> Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2014 3:54 AM
> To: Duncan Murdoch
> Cc: R. Help
> Subject: Re: [R] some question about vector[-NULL]
>
>
> Tks, i think using logical index is a way, but to do that, i have to
> keep a vector as long as the original vector. that's, to exclude
> position 1 and 3 from
> a<-1:5
> I have to let b<-c(F,T,F,T,T) and exec a[b], not a[-c(1,3)]. which
> c(1,3) is much shorter than b if a is a long vector. that's, b would
> be c(F,T,F,T,T,T,T,......,T) I thought a way ,
>  let d<-c(a,1)
> that d<-c(1,2,3,4,5,1)
> and initialize the index vector   iv to length(d). that is iv<-6.
> then, d[-iv] is always equal  a[- i ] ,  whether i is NULL or not.
> Because if i is NULL ,then iv is 6, if i is 2.then iv is c(2,6) and so
> on.......
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> PO SU
> mail: desolator88 at 163.com
> Majored in Statistics from SJTU
>
>
>
>
> At 2014-09-11 01:58:46, "Duncan Murdoch" <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >On 10/09/2014 12:20 PM, William Dunlap wrote:
> >> Can you make your example a bit more concrete?  E.g., is your 'index
> >> vector' A an integer vector?  If so, integer(0), an integer vector
> >> with no elements, would be a more reasonable return value than NULL,
> >> an object of class NULL with length 0, for the 'not found' case and
> >> you could check for that case by asking if length(A)==0.
> >>
> >> Show us typical inputs and expected outputs for your function (i.e.,
> >> the problem you want to solve).
> >
> >I think the problem with integer(0) and NULL is the same:  a[-i]
> doesn't
> >act as expected (leaving out all the elements of i, i.e. nothing) if i
> >is either of those.  The solution is to use logical indexing, not
> >negative numerical indexing.
> >
> >Duncan Murdoch
> >>
> >> Bill Dunlap
> >> TIBCO Software
> >> wdunlap tibco.com
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 8:53 AM, PO SU <rhelpmaillist at 163.com>
> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Tks for your
> >> >
> >> > a <- list(ress = 1, res = NULL)
> >> > And in my second question, let me explain it :
> >> > Actually i have two vectors in global enviroment, called A and B
> .A is initialized to NULL which used to record some index in B.
> >> > Then i would run a function F,  and each time, i would get a index
> value or NULL. that's,  D<-F(B). D would be NULL or  some index
> position in B.
> >> > But in the function F, though input is B,  i would exclude the
> index value from  B recorded in A. That's :
> >> > F<-function( B ) {
> >> > B<-B[-A]
> >> > some processing...
> >> > res<-NULL or some new index not included in A
> >> > return(res)
> >> > }
> >> > so in a loop,
> >> > A<-NULL
> >> > for( i in 1:100000) {
> >> > D<-F(B)
> >> > A<-c(A,D)
> >> > }
> >> > I never know whether D is a NULL or a different index  compared
> with indexes already recorded in A.
> >> > Actually, A<-c(A,D) work well, i never worry about whether D is
> NULL or a real index, but in the function F,  B<-B[-A] won't work.
> >> > so i hope that, e.g.
> >> > a<-1:3
> >> > a[-NULL] wouldn't trigger an error but return a.
> >> > Because, if i wrote function like the following:
> >> >
> >> > F<-function( B ) {
> >> > if( is.null(A))
> >> > B<-B
> >> > else
> >> > B<-B[-A]
> >> > some processing...
> >> > res<-NULL or some new index not included in A
> >> > return(res)
> >> > }
> >> > May be after 5 or 10 loops, A would already not NULL, so the added
> if ..else statement would be repeated in left  9999 loops which i would
> not like to see.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> >
> >> > PO SU
> >> > mail: desolator88 at 163.com
> >> > Majored in Statistics from SJTU
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > At 2014-09-10 06:45:59, "Duncan Murdoch"
> <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >>On 10/09/2014, 3:21 AM, PO SU wrote:
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Dear expeRts,
> >> >>>       I have some programming questions about NULL in R.There
> are listed as follows:
> >> >>> 1. I find i can't let a list have a element NULL:
> >> >>> a<-list()
> >> >>> a$ress<-1
> >> >>> a$res<-NULL
> >> >>> a
> >> >>> str(a)
> >> >>
> >> >>You can do it using
> >> >>
> >> >>a <- list(ress = 1, res = NULL)
> >> >>
> >> >>> How can i know i have a named element but it is NULL, not just
> get a$xxxx,a$iiii,a$oooo there all get NULL
> >> >>
> >> >>That's a little harder.  There are a few ways:
> >> >>
> >> >>"res" %in% names(a) & is.null(a[["res"]])
> >> >>
> >> >>or
> >> >>
> >> >>identical(a["res"], list(res = NULL))
> >> >>
> >> >>or
> >> >>
> >> >>is.null(a[[2]])
> >> >>
> >> >>should all work.
> >> >>
> >> >>Generally because of the special handling needed, it's a bad idea
> to try
> >> >>to store NULL in a list.
> >> >>
> >> >>> 2.The most important thing:
> >> >>> a<-1:10
> >> >>> b<-NULL or 1
> >> >>> a<-c(a,b) will work so i don't need to know whether b is null or
> not,but:
> >> >>> a[-NULL] can't work!!  i just need a[-NULL]==a , how can i reach
> this purpose?
> >> >>
> >> >>Using !, and a logical test, e.g.
> >> >>
> >> >>a[!nullentry(a)]
> >> >>
> >> >>where nullentry() is a function based on one of the tests above,
> but
> >> >>applied to all entries.
> >> >>
> >> >>Duncan Murdoch
> >> >>
> >> > ______________________________________________
> >> > R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> >> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-
> guide.html
> >> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-
> guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

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