Martin Maechler wrote:> diag(x) preserves the storage mode of x for 'complex' and
> 'double' precision, but converts integer and logicals to double :
Duncan Murdoch wrote:> I think the change to preserve integer makes sense, but preserving
> logical does not. A diagonal matrix has zeros off the diagonal, and
> they are not logical. Having diag() sometimes return a matrix with
> FALSE off the diagonal just looks wrong.
Making diag(1:10) return an integer matrix does make sense, but it
could still be undesirable. Often, the user will have intended to
get a real matrix, and will after another operation, but only after an
unnecessary coercion is done. For example: x<-diag(1:10); x[1,2]<-2.0
I personally think keeping diag(1:10) integer is best, but I thought
I'd point out the contrary argument.
Having diag(rep(TRUE,10)) return a logical matrix with FALSE off the
diagonal does not strike me as too odd. It makes sense if you think
of (FALSE, TRUE) as forming a field under operations of sum=XOR and
product=AND. And of course it will typically be converted to a 0/1
matrix later if that's what was actually intended.
Radford Neal
