R devel - Sep 2012 - all.equal on external pointers and environments

For an external pointer

 > xp
<pointer: (nil)>

one might expect all.equal to behave as for environments

 > e = new.env()
 > all.equal(e, e)
[1] TRUE

but it does not

 > all.equal(xp, xp)
Error in unclass(target) : cannot unclass an external pointer

A solution is to dispatch to all.equal.language (?) in

src/library/base/R/all.equal.R:26

but this requires an is.expternalptr primitive.

In some respects, one might expect all.equal for environments to be more 
thorough

   e = new.env(); e[["a"]] = 1
   all.equal(e, new.env())          ## expect FALSE, as in next line
   all.equal(as.list(e), as.list(new.env()))
   all.equal(new.env(), new.env())  ## TRUE; ok?

Martin
-- 
Computational Biology / Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
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