Hi all, I came across an issue in using the Matrix package which made it that I could only subset Matrices using the numeric class, but could not using integers. Steps to reproduce the problem:
library(Matrix) # this class has *nothing* to do with Matrix setClass("MyClass", representation(myvalue = "numeric"), prototype(myvalue = NA_real_)) # this class also has nothing to do with Matrix setClassUnion("NumOrMyClass", c("numeric", "MyClass")) # this is to demonstrate creating and subsetting a specific Matrix m <- new("dgCMatrix", i = c(2L, 0L, 1L, 2L, 0L, 1L), p = c(0L, 1L, 2L, 4L, 4L, 6L), Dim = c(3L, 5L), Dimnames = list(NULL, NULL), x = c(2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1), factors = list()) # this next line fails: m[1:2, 1:2] The last line fails consistently with R 3.6.1 and Matrix 1.2-17 on a variety of operating systems and computers (tested with ubuntu 19.10 & windows 10). I'll note at this point that without the class union I defined above, the rest of the code works perfectly fine. There are 2 workarounds I've come up with. Firstly, one could change the last line to m[as.numeric(1:2), as.numeric(1:2)] or as.numeric(seq()) or c(1, 2), etc. The other workaround is to change setClassUnion("NumOrMyClass", c("numeric", "MyClass")) to setClassUnion("NumOrMyClass", c("numeric", "double", "integer", "MyClass")), which I believe should be the recommended workaround here. The underlying issue, though, is that I would not have expected *anything* that I write to get in the way of Matrix; in fact, the classes that I defined have nothing to do with Matrix at all. So, I have some fears that this might be a bigger problem, possibly either in Methods or in Base. 1. Can others confirm that this is in fact an issue as I believe it to be? 2. If it is a legitimate issue, have others seen it manifested working with other packages that are not Matrix? In this case, I believe that the class union I defied is somehow interfering with the "index" class union in Matrix, R/AllClass.R, line 809 3. Why should the class union I defined interfere with the inner workings of a separate package? 4. Is this a bug in Base or Methods? Thank you for your time! Sincerely, Ezra [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel