[R-pkg-devel] tibbles are not data frames

[Göran Broström]

On 2017-09-26 11:56, Gábor Csárdi wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 10:35 AM, Joris Meys <Joris.Meys at ugent.be> wrote:
>> I don't like the dropping of dimensions either. That doesn't change the
>> fact that a tibble reacts different from a data.frame. So tibbles do not
>> inherit correctly from the class data.frame, and it can thus be argued that
>> it's against OOP paradigms to pretend tibbles inherit from the class
>> data.frame.
> 
> I have yet to see an OOP system in which a subclass cannot override the methods
> of its superclass. Not only is this in line with OOP paradigms, it is
> actually one of
> the essential OOP features.
> 
> To be more constructive, if you have a function that only works with
> data frame inputs, then
> it is good practice to check that the supplied input is indeed a data
> frame. This is
> independent of tibbles.

It is not. I check input for being a data frame, but tibbles pass that 
test. That's the essence of the problem.

> In practice it seems to me that an easy fix is to just call
> as.data.frame on the input. This should
> either convert it to a data frame, or throw an error.

Sure, but I still need to rewrite the package.

Görn

> For tibbles it
> drops the tbl* classes.
> 
> Gabor
> 
>> Defensive coding techniques would check if it's a tibble and
>> return an error saying a data.frame is expected. Unless tibbles inherit
>> correctly from data.frame.
>>
>> I have nothing against tibbles. But calling them "data.frame" raises
>> expectations that can't be fulfilled.
> 
> [...]
> 
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