On 25-Mar-10 19:07:23, Erik Iverson wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Jeff Brown wrote:
>> I would expect the following:
>>
>> paste(
>> as.character( cat( rep( ".", 2 ) ) ),
>> "a string",
>> as.character( cat( rep( ".", 3 ) ) )
>> );
>>
>> to yield this string: ". . a string . . .", but instead it yields
>> this:
>>
>>> . .. . .[1] " a string "
>>
> cat is writing its output to the console, not creating an object
> like you want. notice the second cat will return (and write to
> the console) before paste.
>
> You need the collapse argument to paste, forget about cat for this.
> Try:
>
> pc <- function(...) paste(..., collapse = " ")
> rd <- function(n) rep(".", n)
> pc(pc(rd(2)), "a string", pc(rd(3)))
>
> Probably many other ways.
> --Erik
One needs to be very circumspect with this sort of thing! For instance,
experimenting with simplifications of Jeff's expression:
paste(
rep( ".", 2 ),
"a string",
rep( ".", 3 )
)
# [1] ". a string ." ". a string ." ". a string ."
Here, it seems to be recycling the length-2 and length-3 vectors
rep( ".", 2 ) and rep( ".", 3 ) around the length-1 vector "a string"!
Ted.
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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk>
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Date: 25-Mar-10 Time: 19:19:08
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