R devel - Sep 2023 - NROW and NCOL on NULL

Dear list,

I do not know what would be the 'correct' answer to the following but
I think that they should return the same value to avoid potential
problems and hard to debug errors.

Regards,

Simone
---------------------------------------
> NCOL(NULL)
[1] 1
> NROW(NULL)
[1] 0
> sessionInfo()
R version 4.3.1 RC (2023-06-08 r84523 ucrt)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 11 x64 (build 22621)

Matrix products: default


locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=Italian_Italy.utf8  LC_CTYPE=Italian_Italy.utf8
[3] LC_MONETARY=Italian_Italy.utf8 LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=Italian_Italy.utf8

time zone: Europe/Rome
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_4.3.1

-- 
___________________________________________________

Simone Giannerini
Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche "Paolo Fortunati"
Universita' di Bologna
Via delle belle arti 41 - 40126  Bologna,  ITALY
Tel: +39 051 2098262  Fax: +39 051 232153
https://simonegiannerini.net/

It's been documented for a long time that NCOL(NULL) is 1.  What 
particular problems did you have in mind?  There might be other ways to 
guard against them.

Duncan Murdoch

On 23/09/2023 1:43 p.m., Simone Giannerini wrote:
> Dear list,
> 
> I do not know what would be the 'correct' answer to the following
but
> I think that they should return the same value to avoid potential
> problems and hard to debug errors.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Simone
> ---------------------------------------
> 
>> NCOL(NULL)
> [1] 1
> 
>> NROW(NULL)
> [1] 0
> 
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 4.3.1 RC (2023-06-08 r84523 ucrt)
> Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
> Running under: Windows 11 x64 (build 22621)
> 
> Matrix products: default
> 
> 
> locale:
> [1] LC_COLLATE=Italian_Italy.utf8  LC_CTYPE=Italian_Italy.utf8
> [3] LC_MONETARY=Italian_Italy.utf8 LC_NUMERIC=C
> [5] LC_TIME=Italian_Italy.utf8
> 
> time zone: Europe/Rome
> tzcode source: internal
> 
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
> 
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] compiler_4.3.1
>

I just saw this
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r85704 | hornik | 2023-12-19 00:33:07 -0600 (Tue, 19 Dec 2023) | 1 line
Changed paths:
   M /trunk/doc/NEWS.Rd
   M /trunk/src/library/base/R/matrix.R
   M /trunk/src/library/base/man/nrow.Rd
   M /trunk/src/library/profile/Common.R

Have NCOL(NULL) return 0 instead of 1.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many thanks to Kurt and the whole R-core team!

Simone

On Sat, Sep 23, 2023 at 7:43?PM Simone Giannerini <sgiannerini at
gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear list,
>
> I do not know what would be the 'correct' answer to the following
but
> I think that they should return the same value to avoid potential
> problems and hard to debug errors.
>
> Regards,
>
> Simone
> ---------------------------------------
>
> > NCOL(NULL)
> [1] 1
>
> > NROW(NULL)
> [1] 0
>
> > sessionInfo()
> R version 4.3.1 RC (2023-06-08 r84523 ucrt)
> Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
> Running under: Windows 11 x64 (build 22621)
>
> Matrix products: default
>
>
> locale:
> [1] LC_COLLATE=Italian_Italy.utf8  LC_CTYPE=Italian_Italy.utf8
> [3] LC_MONETARY=Italian_Italy.utf8 LC_NUMERIC=C
> [5] LC_TIME=Italian_Italy.utf8
>
> time zone: Europe/Rome
> tzcode source: internal
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] compiler_4.3.1
>
> --
> ___________________________________________________
>
> Simone Giannerini
> Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche "Paolo Fortunati"
> Universita' di Bologna
> Via delle belle arti 41 - 40126  Bologna,  ITALY
> Tel: +39 051 2098262  Fax: +39 051 232153
> https://simonegiannerini.net/
> ___________________________________________________


-- 
___________________________________________________

Simone Giannerini
Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche "Paolo Fortunati"
Universita' di Bologna
Via delle belle arti 41 - 40126  Bologna,  ITALY
Tel: +39 051 2098262  Fax: +39 051 232153
https://simonegiannerini.net/