R help - Aug 2008 - match and as.character truncation

I know the following is documented behaviour, in the sense that the  
help page for as.character mentions  that it truncates at about 500  
characters... but wouldn't it be better if there was a warning of  
some sort issued?  Or am I misunderstanding what's happening here?

 > str <- sample(LETTERS,301, replace=TRUE)
 > search.list <- list(str[-301],str)
 > item <- list(str)                        # == search.list[2]
 > match(item, search.list)
[1] 1
 > item <- list(str[1:299])
 > match(item, search.list)
[1] 1
 > item <- list(str[1:29])
 > match(item, search.list)
[1] NA
 > version$version.string
[1] "R version 2.7.1 (2008-06-23)"

Thanks.



-Eric Weese
PhD candidate, Economics
MIT