[R] Problem with the matrix() function.

[Bert Gunter]

I have no opinion on your queries, but whatever is done, it should be
properly documented, which appears not to be the case presently afaics.

-- Bert



On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 12:33 PM Rolf Turner <r.turner using auckland.ac.nz> wrote:

>
> In the course of writing a bit of somewhat convoluted code I recently
> made a silly error that revealed the following phenomenon:
>
> m <- matrix(1:10,nrow=2,ncol=c(5,4))
>
> produces
>
> >      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
> > [1,]    1    3    5    7    9
> > [2,]    2    4    6    8   10
>
> That is, the nonsense value of c(5,4) for the "ncol" argument is
> accepted, without comment --- the first entry of the given ncol argument
> is used.
>
> It might be argued that this is a reasonable accommodation of the user's
> ineptitude.  I am of the opinion that an error should be thrown if the
> value of ncol is not an integer scalar.
>
> I have also discerned that if ncol is not an integer, it is replaced by
> its floor value.
>
> Is this a Good Thing?
>
> What do others think?
>
> cheers,
>
> Rolf Turner
>
> --
> Technical Editor ANZJS
> Department of Statistics
> University of Auckland
> Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> 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.
>

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]