On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 12:07 AM, Martin Maechler
<maech...@stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
>>>>>> Henrik Bengtsson <henrik.bengts...@gmail.com>
>>>>>> on Thu, 1 Feb 2018 10:26:23 -0800 writes:
>
> > On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 12:14 AM, Martin Maechler
> > <maech...@stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
> >>>>>>> Michael Lawrence <lawrence.mich...@gene.com>
> >>>>>>> on Tue, 30 Jan 2018 15:57:42 -0800 writes:
> >>
> >> > I just meant that the minimal contract for as.list() appears to be
> that it
> >> > returns a VECSXP. To the user, we might say that is.list() will
> always
> >> > return TRUE.
> >>
> >> Indeed. I also agree with Herv'e that the user level
> >> documentation should rather mention is.list(.) |--> TRUE than
> >> VECSXP, and interestingly for the experts among us,
> >> the is.list() primitive gives not only TRUE for VECSXP but
> >> also of LISTSXP (the good ole' pairlists).
> >>
> >> > I'm not sure we can expect consistency across methods
> >> > beyond that, nor is it feasible at this point to match the
> >> > semantics of the methods package. It deals in "class
> >> > space" while as.list() deals in "typeof() space".
> >>
> >> > Michael
> >>
> >> Yes, and that *is* the extra complexity we have in R (inherited
> >> from S, I'd say) which ideally wasn't there and of course is
> >> not there in much younger languages/systems such as julia.
> >>
> >> And --- by the way let me preach, for the "class space" ---
> >> do __never__ use
> >>
> >> if(class(obj) == "<classname>")
> >>
> >> in your code (I see this so often, shockingly to me ...) but rather use
> >>
> >> if(inherits(obj, "<classname>"))
> >>
> >> instead.
>
> > Second this one. But, soon (*) the former will at least give the
> > correct answer when length(class(obj)) == 1
> > and produce an error
> > otherwise.
>
> Not quite; I think you you did not get the real danger in using
> 'class(.) == *':
> What you say above would only be true if there were only S3 classes!
> Try the following small R snippet
>
> myDate <- setClass("myDate", contains = "Date")
> ## Object of class "myDate"
> ## [1] "2018-02-02"
> (d <- myDate(Sys.Date()))
> class(d) == "Date" # is FALSE (hence of length 1)
> inherits(d, "Date") # is TRUE
>
> > So, several of these cases will be caught at run-time in a
> > near future.
>
> Maybe. But all the others are still wrong, as I show above.
Oh my, thanks for clarifying/emphasizing. I hope I didn't mislead too
many people. I've been away from S4 for too long - I like to stay in
the cozy S3 world :)
/Henrik
> Martin
>
> > (*) When _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_CONDITION_=true becomes the default
> > behavior - hopefully by R 3.5.0.
>
> >>
> >> Martin
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