R devel - Sep 2010 - as.character on NaN gives "NaN", is that intentional?

Dear DevelopeRs,

I am surprised about the outcome of the second command:

str(as.character(as.numeric("ee"))) 
str(as.character(log(-1)))

I would have expected a character NA. Is there an intention behind this 
behavior?

Best, Ulrike

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* Ulrike Groemping                                  *
* BHT Berlin - University of Applied Sciences       *
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It seems to me that preserving information about the kind of number 
(or not) present would be useful. I rather like the fact that
    as.numeric(as.character(NaN))
and
    as.numeric(as.character(Inf))
both work as the identity operator on numeric-like objects.  (In this 
context, note that both is.numeric(NaN) and is.numeric(Inf) both return 
TRUE.)  In your example, the character string "ee" does not represent 
any number that I know about (at least in standard R).

     Kevin

On 9/7/2010 11:23 AM, Ulrike Gr?mping wrote:
> Dear DevelopeRs,
>
> I am surprised about the outcome of the second command:
>
> str(as.character(as.numeric("ee"))) str(as.character(log(-1)))
>
> I would have expected a character NA. Is there an intention behind 
> this behavior?
>
> Best, Ulrike
>