R devel - Jun 2000 - exists() and the mode argument (PR#576)

The following seems to be odd behaviour:

fred <- 1:10
mode(fred) # "numeric"
exists("fred") # TRUE
exists("fred", mode="numeric") # FALSE

Unless I have misunderstood, the final evaluation should be TRUE,
as an object called "fred" exists and its mode is "numeric".
In
the same category, I have just noticed that

get("fred") # 1:10
get("fred", mode="numeric") # gives an Error: variable
"fred" was not found

Cheers, Jonathan.

--please do not edit the information below--

Version:
 platform = sparc-sun-solaris2.7
 arch = sparc
 os = solaris2.7
 system = sparc, solaris2.7
 status = 
 major = 1
 minor = 0.1
 year = 2000
 month = April
 day = 14
 language = R

Search Path:
 .GlobalEnv, Autoloads, package:base

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On Tue, 20 Jun 2000 J.C.Rougier@durham.ac.uk wrote:
> The following seems to be odd behaviour:
> 
> fred <- 1:10
> mode(fred) # "numeric"
> exists("fred") # TRUE
> exists("fred", mode="numeric") # FALSE
> 
> Unless I have misunderstood, the final evaluation should be TRUE,
> as an object called "fred" exists and its mode is
"numeric".  In
Its `mode' is 
> typeof(fred)
[1] "integer"

and so
> exists("fred", mode="integer")
[1] TRUE

See ?exists

    mode: the type of interest for the object.
              ^^^^ 

I think this needs to be re-written in the documentation, or do
people think it should be the value of mode?  The latter appears
to be what the prototype uses, in that
> exists("fred", mode="numeric")
[1] T
> exists("fred", mode="integer")
[1] T
> exists("fred", mode="double")
[1] T

(sic)


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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