minor error in documentation of pmax in base (PR#2513)
On 01/31/03 13:02, Liaw, Andy wrote:
From: Jonathan Baron [mailto:baron@cattell.psych.upenn.edu] In a way it is not surprising, but some functions that operate on vectors will coerce their outputs into vectors and others won't. For example, try m1 <- array(1:24,c(2,3,4)) sort(m1) order(m1)
Now that I think a bit more about this example, I'm not sure if I like pmax and pmin to work as they do now. What if one does the following: a1 <- array(1:24, 2:4) a2 <- array(24:1, 4:2) pmax(a1, a2) pmin(a1, a2)
The mind boggles!
I don't know if there's a "natural" way to dimension the result in this case. Seen from this perspective, my preference would actually be what sort() and order() do: drop the attribute. If array is what's intended, then the user can do that coercion explicitly. Just my $0.02... Andy
order() drops the attributes, sort() does not! Although I see the problem, my own preference is to keep pmax and pmin as they are, and document it. It took me a while to trust my ability to put arrays back together after they became vectors. I think novices might appreciate not having to do this. Jon