Suggestion: Make _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_=warn the default for R 3.6.2

On 11/18/19 3:44 PM, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
.On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 12:35 AM Martin Maechler
<maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
Henrik Bengtsson
     on Sun, 17 Nov 2019 20:42:32 -0800 writes:
     > Hi,

     > I'm not sure where we are in getting CRAN packages getting their
     > _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_=true bugs fixed (*), but maybe it'd help to
     > make _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_=warn the new default in the upcoming R
     > 3.6.2?
Interesting, I had similar thoughts the last few days
... but not for R 3.6.x --- I think it's out of the question to
do that for a "minor" update --- but for R 4.0.0.

     > Warnings of type:

     > $ R --vanilla
     >> Sys.setenv("_R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_" = "warn")
     >> c(TRUE, FALSE) && TRUE
     > [1] TRUE
     > Warning message:
     > In c(TRUE, FALSE) && TRUE : 'length(x) = 2 > 1' in coercion to 'logical(1)'

     > could help encourage more package maintainers to fix these bugs
     > sooner. Enabling this warning by default is in line with what the
     > current default behavior for _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_CONDITION_ bugs:

     >> if (c(TRUE, FALSE)) 42
     > [1] 42
     > Warning message:
     > In if (c(TRUE, FALSE)) 42 :
     > the condition has length > 1 and only the first element will be used

     > which has been the case for many years.

     > Hopefully in a not too far future, we get to a point where we can have
     > _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_=true and _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_CONDITION_=true
     > as the new defaults.
Exactly.  My own thoughts (mentioned above) were actually more about
the *other* _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_* variable, i.e., _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_CONDITION_
and that ---- as I have only noticed these days, when considering
the exact impact of the upcoming

     class(<matrix>)  |-->  c("matrix", "array")

change --- has actually *not* been part of the  '--as-cran'
checks, nor (AFAIK, but I don't really know) of extra CRAN
incoming checks.

I'm proposing to add   _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_CONDITION_=true
to the --as-cran  checks  ASAP (within weeks)
To do that, I think we would need:

_R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_CONDITION_=package:_R_CHECK_PACKAGE_NAME_,abort,verbose

such that the check only applies to the code of the package being R
CMD check:ed and not to code elsewhere. If not, there will be lots of
confusing "false-positives" and extra work for CRAN. Unfortunately,
the (great) "package:_R_CHECK_PACKAGE_NAME_" mechanism is not
implemented for _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_CONDITION_.
The mechanism should be the same for both variables (see R Internals).
It is implemented using a single function in R-devel.
Oh, I am glad I was wrong about this. This is great news. Then, it is
possible to enable this check by having --as-cran set:

_R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_CONDITION_=package:_R_CHECK_PACKAGE_NAME_,abort,verbose

As Martin says, I think this would be great to add.  R CMD check
--cran already does:

_R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_=package:_R_CHECK_PACKAGE_NAME_,abort,verbose

For those who still follow, the main point of my original post had
nothing to do with 'R CMD check'.  Instead, I wanted base R to default
to:

_R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_=warn

such that end users (and developers) will get run-time warnings about
this type of bug. Without "warn", there's a great risk these bugs will
not be fixed in a very long time.  Also, using "warn" will go
undetected by 'R CMD check' (as now).  And 'R CMD check --as-cran'
will still detect them (as now).

/Henrik
Tomas

and indeed, I
think we should consider to have *both*  _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_* = true
become the default in R 4.0.0.
That would be great, but I'm a bit skeptical at the same time - I
think R 4.0.0 might be too optimistic but I won't complain if that
would be goal. I suspect there are still lots of CRAN packages that
would break this way overnight which would cause a major headache for
everything and much work for the CRAN Team.  This is why I wrote "I'm
not sure where we are in getting CRAN packages getting their
_R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_=true bugs fixed"; I'm not aware of anyone
having checked the CRAN status for this bug.

/Henrik

Martin Maechler
ETH Zurich  and  R Core

     > (*) I understand that CRAN incoming checks with
     > _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_=package:_R_CHECK_PACKAGE_NAME_,abort,verbose,
     > so all packages submitted to CRAN have to pass this check.  I don't
     > think Bioconductor checks for these yet, but I could be wrong.

     > /Henrik

     > ______________________________________________
     > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
     > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

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Suggestion: Make _R_CHECK_LENGTH_1_LOGIC2_=warn the default for R 3.6.2

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