Message-ID: <4C867077.5030607@gmail.com>
Date: 2010-09-07T17:03:51Z
From: Kevin Coombes
Subject: as.character on NaN gives "NaN", is that intentional?
In-Reply-To: <4C8666EE.9030807@bht-berlin.de>
It seems to me that preserving information about the kind of number
(or not) present would be useful. I rather like the fact that
as.numeric(as.character(NaN))
and
as.numeric(as.character(Inf))
both work as the identity operator on numeric-like objects. (In this
context, note that both is.numeric(NaN) and is.numeric(Inf) both return
TRUE.) In your example, the character string "ee" does not represent
any number that I know about (at least in standard R).
Kevin
On 9/7/2010 11:23 AM, Ulrike Gr?mping wrote:
> Dear DevelopeRs,
>
> I am surprised about the outcome of the second command:
>
> str(as.character(as.numeric("ee"))) str(as.character(log(-1)))
>
> I would have expected a character NA. Is there an intention behind
> this behavior?
>
> Best, Ulrike
>