R devel - Apr 2020 - stringsAsFactors

The NEWS for R 4.0.0 says "R now uses a stringsAsFactors = FALSE 
default, and hence by default no longer converts strings to factors in 
calls to data.frame() and read.table()."

This seems to have been implemented by setting options(stringsAsFactors 
= FALSE) in the main R profile.  However, setting

options(stringsAsFactors = NULL)

reverts to the same behavior as the old options(stringsAsFactors = 
TRUE).  Is this intentional?

Duncan Murdoch

>>>>> Duncan Murdoch 
>>>>>     on Sun, 12 Apr 2020 08:57:14 -0400 writes:
    > The NEWS for R 4.0.0 says "R now uses a stringsAsFactors = FALSE 
    > default, and hence by default no longer converts strings to factors in 
    > calls to data.frame() and read.table()."

    > This seems to have been implemented by setting options(stringsAsFactors
    > = FALSE) in the main R profile.  However, setting

    > options(stringsAsFactors = NULL)

    > reverts to the same behavior as the old options(stringsAsFactors = 
    > TRUE).  Is this intentional?


No!  Thanks a lot for testing R 4.0.0 alpha/beta, noticing and
alerting us about it.

This will be changed ASAP.

... and it will benefit the whole R user community if quite a
few good R users (as most readers of 'R-devel') would start
using 'R 4.0.0 beta' routinely now --- thanks a lot in advance!

Martin

Hello,

I also want to report 2 missed cases of stringsAsFactors=TRUE in base:

1. grid.expand() still uses hard stringsAsFactors=TRUE in its arguments.
2. as.data.frame.table() also keeps factors after conversion from table.
>>>>>> Duncan Murdoch
>>>>>>     on Sun, 12 Apr 2020 08:57:14 -0400 writes:
>
>    > The NEWS for R 4.0.0 says "R now uses a stringsAsFactors =
FALSE
>    > default, and hence by default no longer converts strings to factors
in
>    > calls to data.frame() and read.table()."
>
>    > This seems to have been implemented by setting
options(stringsAsFactors
>    > = FALSE) in the main R profile.  However, setting
>
>    > options(stringsAsFactors = NULL)
>
>    > reverts to the same behavior as the old options(stringsAsFactors
>    > TRUE).  Is this intentional?
>
>
>No!  Thanks a lot for testing R 4.0.0 alpha/beta, noticing and
>alerting us about it.
>
>This will be changed ASAP.
>
>... and it will benefit the whole R user community if quite a
>few good R users (as most readers of 'R-devel') would start
>using 'R 4.0.0 beta' routinely now --- thanks a lot in advance!
>
>Martin
>
>______________________________________________
>R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Further, in addition to the `val <- FALSE` patch a few hours ago by
Martin, the line after should also be changed

- if(!is.logical(val) || is.na(val) || length(val) != 1L)
+ if(!is.logical(val) || length(val) != 1L || is.na(val))

## Consider
Sys.setenv("_R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_" = "TRUE")
options(stringsAsFactors = c(TRUE, FALSE))
default.stringsAsFactors()  # correct error message

On Mon, 13 Apr 2020 at 18:02, Martin Maechler
<maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
>
> >>>>> Duncan Murdoch
> >>>>>     on Sun, 12 Apr 2020 08:57:14 -0400 writes:
>
>     > The NEWS for R 4.0.0 says "R now uses a stringsAsFactors =
FALSE
>     > default, and hence by default no longer converts strings to
factors in
>     > calls to data.frame() and read.table()."
>
>     > This seems to have been implemented by setting
options(stringsAsFactors
>     > = FALSE) in the main R profile.  However, setting
>
>     > options(stringsAsFactors = NULL)
>
>     > reverts to the same behavior as the old options(stringsAsFactors
>     > TRUE).  Is this intentional?
>
>
> No!  Thanks a lot for testing R 4.0.0 alpha/beta, noticing and
> alerting us about it.
>
> This will be changed ASAP.
>
> ... and it will benefit the whole R user community if quite a
> few good R users (as most readers of 'R-devel') would start
> using 'R 4.0.0 beta' routinely now --- thanks a lot in advance!
>
> Martin
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel