On 25 Feb 2003 at 19:05, Patrick Burns wrote:
> There is rumour that some of my mail didn't go where it should have
because
> I don't know how to work email. It was suggested that I summarize
here.
>
> The issue is with sample when the first argument is length 1. Current
> behaviour is:
>
I thought about this. It would be nice to have the behaviour Patrick
Burns proposes, but there is a problem: What to do when the
length one argument is numeric? Look at the following:
> sample(1)
[1] 1> sample(7)
[1] 4 6 1 5 2 3 7> sample(6.9)
[1] 2 4 5 1 3 6 # 6.9 truncated to 6> sample(0)
[1] 0 # What one should expect here is not easy to
# know, as the help page requires a positive
# integer> sample(-3)
[1] -3 # same> sample(0.5)
[1] 0.5> sample(1.5)
[1] 1 # truncated
So what to do with length one numerical arguments, truncate, as seems
to be done (but not always):
> sample(0.99)
[1] 0.99
or round, or give an error if not a positive integer, or?
However it is done it will surely break some code.
Kjetil Halvorsen
> > sample('a', 1)
> Error in sample(x, size, replace, prob) : invalid first argument
> > sample(3+0i, 1)
> Error in x >= 1 : illegal comparison with complex values
> > sample(TRUE, 1)
> [1] 1
> > sample(FALSE, 1)
> [1] FALSE
> > sample(NA, 1)
> Error in if (length(x) == 1 && x >= 1) { :
> missing value where logical needed
> > sample(.5, 1)
> [1] 0.5
>
>
> The proposed behaviour is:
>
> > sample('a', 1)
> [1] "a"
> > sample(3+0i, 1)
> [1] 3+0i
> > sample(TRUE, 1)
> [1] TRUE
> > sample(FALSE, 1)
> [1] FALSE
> > sample(NA, 1)
> [1] NA
> > sample(.5, 1)
> [1] 0.5
>
>
> For some reason that I haven't yet grasped, the current
> behaviour seems to be preferred to the proposed behaviour.
>
> Pat Burns
>
> patrick@burns-stat.com
>
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