Dear Florent, thank you for striving to clearly disentangle and present the issue below. That is a nice "role model" way of approaching such topics!
>>>>> Florent Angly <florent.an...@gmail.com> >>>>> on Fri, 27 Jan 2017 10:24:39 +0100 writes: > Martin, I agree with you that +0 and -0 should generally be treated as > equal, and R does a fine job in this respect. The Wikipedia article on > signed zero (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_zero) echoes this > view but also highlights that +0 and -0 can be treated differently in > particular situations, including their interpretation as mathematical > limits (as in the 1/-0 case). Indeed, the main question here is > whether head() and tail() represent a special case that would benefit > from differentiating between +0 and -0. > We can break down the discussion into two problems: > A/ the discrepancy between the implementation of R head() and tail() > and the documentation of these functions (where the use of zero is not > documented and thus not permissible), Ehm, no, in R (and many other software systems), "not documented" does *NOT* entail "not permissible" > B/ the discrepancy between the implementation of R head() and tail() > and their GNU equivalent (which allow zeros and differentiate between > -0 and +0, i.e. head takes "0" and "-0", tail takes "0" and "+0"). This discrepancy, as you mention later comes from the fact that basically, these arguments are strings in the Unix tools (GNU being a special case of Unix, here) and integers in R. Below, I'm giving my personal view of the issue: > There are several possible solutions to address these discrepancies: > 1/ Leave the code as-is but document its behavior with respect to zero > (zeros allowed, with negative zeros treated like positive zeros). > Advantages: This is the path of least resistance, and discrepancy A is fixed. > Disadvantages: Discrepancy B remains (but is documented). That would be my "clear" choice. > 2/ Leave the documentation as-is but reflect this in code by not > allowing zeros at all. > Advantages: Discrepancy A is fixed. > Disadvantages: Discrepancy B remains in some form (but is documented). > Need to deprecate the usage of +0 (which was not clearly documented > but may have been assumed by users). 2/ looks "uniformly inferior" to 1/ to me > 3/ Update the code and documentation to differentiate between +0 and -0. > Advantages: In my eyes, this is the ideal solution since discrepancy A > and (most of) B are resolved. > Disadvantages: It is unclear how to implement this solution and the > implications it may have on backward compatibility: > a/ Allow -0 (as double). But is it supported on all platforms used > by R (see ?Arithmetic)? William has raised the issue that negative > zero cannot be represented as an integer. Should head() and tail() > then strictly check double input (while forbidding integers)? > b/ The input could always be as character. This would allow to > mirror even more closely GNU tail (where the prefix "+" is used to > invert the meaning of n). This probably involves a fair amount of work > and careful handling of deprecation. 3/ involves quite a few complications, and in my view, your advantages are not even getting close to counter-weigh the drawbacks. > On 26 January 2017 at 16:51, William Dunlap <wdun...@tibco.com> wrote: >> In addition, signed zeroes only exist for floating point numbers - the >> bit patterns for as.integer(0) and as.integer(-0) are identical. indeed! >> Bill Dunlap >> TIBCO Software >> wdunlap tibco.com >> >> >> On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 1:53 AM, Martin Maechler >> <maech...@stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote: >>>>>>>> Florent Angly <florent.an...@gmail.com> >>>>>>>> on Wed, 25 Jan 2017 16:31:45 +0100 writes: >>> >>> > Hi all, >>> > The documentation for head() and tail() describes the behavior of >>> > these generic functions when n is strictly positive (n > 0) and >>> > strictly negative (n < 0). How these functions work when given a zero >>> > value is not defined. >>> >>> > Both GNU command-line utilities head and tail behave differently with +0 and -0: >>> > http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/head.1.html >>> > http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/tail.1.html >>> >>> > Since R supports signed zeros (1/+0 != 1/-0) >>> >>> whoa, whoa, .. slow down -- The above is misleading! >>> >>> Rather read in ?Arithmetic (*the* reference to consult for such issues), >>> where the 2nd part of the following section >>> >>> || Implementation limits: >>> || >>> || [..............] >>> || >>> || Another potential issue is signed zeroes: on IEC 60659 platforms >>> || there are two zeroes with internal representations differing by >>> || sign. Where possible R treats them as the same, but for example >>> || direct output from C code often does not do so and may output >>> || ‘-0.0’ (and on Windows whether it does so or not depends on the >>> || version of Windows). One place in R where the difference might be >>> || seen is in division by zero: ‘1/x’ is ‘Inf’ or ‘-Inf’ depending on >>> || the sign of zero ‘x’. Another place is ‘identical(0, -0, num.eq = >>> || FALSE)’. >>> >>> says the *contrary* ( __Where possible R treats them as the same__ ): >>> We do _not_ want to distinguish -0 and +0, >>> but there are cases where it is inavoidable >>> >>> And there are good reasons (mathematics !!) for this. >>> >>> I'm pretty sure that it would be quite a mistake to start >>> differentiating it here... but of course we can continue >>> discussing here if you like. >>> >>> Martin Maechler >>> ETH Zurich and R Core >>> >>> >>> > and the R head() and tail() functions are modeled after >>> > their GNU counterparts, I would expect the R functions to >>> > distinguish between +0 and -0 >>> >>> >> tail(1:5, n=0) >>> > integer(0) >>> >> tail(1:5, n=1) >>> > [1] 5 >>> >> tail(1:5, n=2) >>> > [1] 4 5 >>> >>> >> tail(1:5, n=-2) >>> > [1] 3 4 5 >>> >> tail(1:5, n=-1) >>> > [1] 2 3 4 5 >>> >> tail(1:5, n=-0) >>> > integer(0) # expected 1:5 >>> >>> >> head(1:5, n=0) >>> > integer(0) >>> >> head(1:5, n=1) >>> > [1] 1 >>> >> head(1:5, n=2) >>> > [1] 1 2 >>> >>> >> head(1:5, n=-2) >>> > [1] 1 2 3 >>> >> head(1:5, n=-1) >>> > [1] 1 2 3 4 >>> >> head(1:5, n=-0) >>> > integer(0) # expected 1:5 >>> >>> > For both head() and tail(), I expected 1:5 as output but got >>> > integer(0). I obtained similar results using a data.frame and a >>> > function as x argument. >>> >>> > An easy fix would be to explicitly state in the documentation what n = >>> > 0 does, and that there is no practical difference between -0 and +0. >>> > However, in my eyes, the better approach would be implement support >>> > for -0 and document it. What do you think? >>> >>> > Best, >>> >>> > Florent >>> >>> >>> > PS/ My sessionInfo() gives: >>> > R version 3.3.2 (2016-10-31) >>> > Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit) >>> > Running under: Windows 7 x64 (build 7601) Service Pack 1 >>> >>> > locale: >>> > [1] LC_COLLATE=German_Switzerland.1252 >>> > LC_CTYPE=German_Switzerland.1252 >>> > LC_MONETARY=German_Switzerland.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C >>> > LC_TIME=German_Switzerland.1252 >>> >>> > attached base packages: >>> > [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base >>> >>> > ______________________________________________ >>> > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >>> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >>> >>> ______________________________________________ >>> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel