It's not about asking others to do it really, that was a harsh assumption. I'd be happy to propose a version if it helps, I'd be also very happy if it were just a copy of if_else or fifelse (both MIT FWIW). It's a low level building block and it's broken, IMO it's way better to have it available and documented in base R and incite everyone to use it, so not only we don't suffer from it in the code we write, but also in the code we use or inherit from.
Le mar. 8 juil. 2025 à 13:25, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com> a écrit : > Rather than asking others to do this, why don't you create a tiny > package containing nothing other than an ifelse() replacement? I > wouldn't want to depend on dplyr or data.table just to get their > versions, but depending on your tiny package wouldn't be an issue. > > Duncan Murdoch > > On 2025-07-08 6:12 a.m., Antoine Fabri wrote: > > Dear r-devel, > > > > `ifelse()` has a lot of issues, and for these reasons it has been redone > in > > `dplyr::if_else()` and `data.table::fifelse()`, which are both great. Yet > > it's an important base R function, it's really hard to program in base R > > without it and scores probably as high as it gets in the most_used * > > most_problematic metric. > > > > Obviously we can't change it without breaking a ton of code, but with all > > the experience we now have with it and the dplyr and data.table > alternative > > maybe it might not be absurd to have a good alternative, say `if.else` in > > base R, that we can document on the same page and recommend for future > use. > > It would require a common type in yes/no, not return logical() for all > zero > > length input, work with dates, datetimes and factors, handle a na > condition > > etc. The test suites of dplyr and data.table probably tell us everything > > about the edge cases we want to look at. Maybe the old ifelse could even > > warn when called from the top level, to incite us to work with the new > one. > > > > It feels wrong to me to be stuck with ifelse() forever just because it > has > > been like this for a long time. I'm sure some of you learnt your way > around > > it but I work with R every day and after 10+ years of R it still bites me > > all the time, I'm probably not alone, at least chatGPT called it a > > "footgun", and we don't want that :). > > > > Thanks, > > > > Antoine > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > > > ______________________________________________ > > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
