[R] Why does a custom function called is.numeric.factor break lattice?

sbihorel
Mon, 16 Nov 2015 13:00:49 -0000

Hi,

Interesting, based upon my understanding of S3 methods, I would have
assumed that my function would be applied to objects of class
"numeric.factor". I was not aware of this multiple
"dispatch".

Thanks for pointing this out.


On 11/15/2015 9:42 PM, Bert Gunter wrote:
> Think about it.
>
> I shall assume that you are familiar with S3 methods.  What do you
> think would happen when xyplot code calls is.numeric() on a factor
> object expecting it to call the is.numeric primitive but, instead,
> finding a factor method defined, calls that? Note that your factor
> method has no arguments, but the is.numeric() primitive does. Hence
> when the code calls the primitive on the factor object, the error you
> saw is thrown.
>
> I would say that this is a weakness of the informal S3 "class"
system,
> although you probably should not have been surprised that is.numeric
> is called on factors as the "x" argument, so you were inviting
trouble
> by defining a factor method that overrides this behavior.
> Nevertheless, I would argue that one cannot know in general when this
> occurs for other S3 classes, and that therefore allowing methods for
> is.numeric() is dangerous.
>
> Of course, full qualification in the original xyplot code
> (base::is.numeric() rather than is.numeric() ) would avoid such
> things, but that's a drag.
>
> Contrary opinions and corrections to any flawed understanding on my
> part are welcome, of course.
>
> Cheers,
> Bert
>
>
> Bert Gunter
>
> "Data is not information. Information is not knowledge. And knowledge
> is certainly not wisdom."
>     -- Clifford Stoll
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 6:22 PM, sbihorel
> <Sebastien.Bihorel at cognigencorp.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Pretty much everything is in the title of the post. An example is
below.
>>
>> library(lattice)
>> data <-
>>
data.frame(x=rep(1:10,8),y=rnorm(80),trt=factor(rep(1:4,each=20)),groups=rep(1:8,each=10))
>> xyplot <- xyplot(y~x|trt,data,groups=groups)
>>
>> is.numeric.factor <- function(){
>>    print('hello world')
>> }
>>
>> xyplot <- xyplot(y~x|trt,data,groups=groups)
>>
>> Thanks for shedding some light on this.
>>
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