R help - Feb 2003 - is.finite() of a list

> ?is.finite
     `is.finite' and `is.infinite' return a vector of the same length
     as `x', indicating which elements are finite or not.

is.finite() of a list seems to return a vector of the length of the list, but
with value FALSE if any list element isn't finite.  Is this intended?
> l4 <- list(NA,1,2,3); l4; length(l4); is.finite(l4)
[[1]]
[1] NA

[[2]]
[1] 1

[[3]]
[1] 2

[[4]]
[1] 3

[1] 4
[1] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
> version
         _              
platform i386-pc-mingw32
arch     i386           
os       mingw32        
system   i386, mingw32  
status                  
major    1              
minor    6.2            
year     2003           
month    01             
day      10             
language R              
> system('winver') 
[Windows XP Professional]

Thanks,
Steve Wisdom
Westport CT USA 







-- 
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On Sun, 9 Feb 2003, stephen wisdom wrote:
> 
> > ?is.finite
> 
>      `is.finite' and `is.infinite' return a vector of the same
length
>      as `x', indicating which elements are finite or not.
> 
> is.finite() of a list seems to return a vector of the length of the list, 
but with value FALSE if any list element isn't finite.  Is this intended?

That is not the pattern, and the real pattern *is* intentional.  All
non-numeric vectors are not finite:
> is.finite(list(1,2,3))
[1] FALSE FALSE FALSE

Although a list is a generic vector, it is not a numeric vector.

I'll add that comment to the help page.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at 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 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595