[R-sig-Geo] spdep: new zero.policy attribute

[Roger Bivand]

In forthcoming spdep 1.3-1, spatial weight listw objects get a new zero.policy attribute. The attribute is added as objects are created to record the status of the zero.policy argument in the function creating the object, see: https://github.com/r-spatial/spdep/commit/e159de922c61713529a4075b0dfc2966eb8f9ad6. 

Reverse dependency checks only show problems from over-eager unit testing in SpatialFeatureExperiment, a Bioconductor package, but other workflows may be impacted. The new attribute is used in tests for spatial autocorrelation to set the zero.policy argument in those tests (the arguments were zero.policy=NULL, are now zero.policy=attr(listw, "zero.policy") where listw is the spatial weights object argument to the test function.

This will be extended to spatialreg and friends if nobody reports negative impacts here soon. I'll wait before releasing 1.3-1 for a few days to see if any feedback is forthcoming.

Hope this long-overdue change is helpful,

Roger

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Roger Bivand
Emeritus Professor
Norwegian School of Economics
Postboks 3490 Ytre Sandviken, 5045 Bergen, Norway
Roger.Bivand using nhh.no