I() fails on objects of class POSIXct (PR#1587)

Although the documentation is somewhat sketchy, I() can be used to create
objects of class AsIs:

I("a")

[1] "a"
attr(,"class")
[1] "AsIs"      "character"

I(4)

[1] 4
attr(,"class")
[1] "AsIs"    "numeric"

I(4 + 0i)

[1] 4+0i
attr(,"class")
[1] "AsIs"    "complex"

This fails for objects of class POSIXct.

class(ISOdate(2002, 5, 21))

[1] "POSIXt"  "POSIXct"

I(ISOdate(2002, 5, 21))

Error in names(x) : evaluation is nested too deeply: infinite recursion?

Interestingly enough, it produces an (incorrect?) answer for objects of class
POSIXlt

class(as.POSIXlt(ISOdate(2002, 5, 21)))

[1] "POSIXt"  "POSIXlt"

I(as.POSIXlt(ISOdate(2002, 5, 21)))

[1] "  0" "  0" "  8" " 21" "  4" "102" "  2" "140" "  1"

Of course, this may not be a bug since it is not clear that I() is documented
to do anything like this.

R.version

_                   
platform sparc-sun-solaris2.6
arch     sparc               
os       solaris2.6          
system   sparc, solaris2.6   
status                       
major    1                   
minor    5.0                 
year     2002                
month    04                  
day      29                  
language R                   

Regards,

David Kane

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