On 8/22/2007 11:50 AM, Martin Maechler wrote:
> Consider this example code
>
> c1 <- letters[1:7]; c2 <- LETTERS[1:7]
> c1[2] <- c2[3:4] <- NA
> rbind(c1,c2)
>
> ## [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6] [,7]
> ## c1 "a" NA "c" "d" "e" "f" "g"
> ## c2 "A" "B" NA NA "E" "F" "G"
>
> paste(c1,c2)
>
> ## -> [1] "a A" "NA B" "c NA" "d NA" "e E" "f F" "g G"
>
> where a more logical result would have entries 2:4 equal to
> NA
> i.e., as.character(NA)
> aka NA_character_
>
> Is this worth persuing, or does anyone see why not?
A fairly common use of paste is to put together reports for human
consumption. Currently we have
> p <- as.character(NA)
> paste("the value of p is", p)
[1] "the value of p is NA"
which looks reasonable. Would this become
> p <- as.character(NA)
> paste("the value of p is", p)
[1] NA
under your proposal? (In a quick search I was unable to find a real
example where this would happen, but it would worry me...)
Duncan Murdoch
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