I've bumped my head on the walls trying to create an alias (aka a pointer, or a new short nickname designating the same object in memory without copying that object) to a subpart of a complex object. Let's say I am working with an object of class SpatialPolygonsDataFrame (package "sp"), and I want to perform operations on an part thereof, deep down in the hierarchical representation of that object. Instead of writing repeatedly things like
myBigMap#polygons[FRA][[1]]#Polygons[[1]]
I want to be able to write simply
mypolygon
so that
myBigMap#polygons[FRA][[1]]#Polygons[[1]]#coords
can be abbreviated
mypolygon#coords
etc. I've seen that I should maybe use environments as a replacement to the former .Alias defunct function, but can't find out how to tell R that I want to consider a subpart of a complex object as an environment. Thanks!
assignment:
mypolygon=myBigMap#polygons[FRA][[1]]#Polygons[[1]]
doesn't create a copy until you modify something in it. So if its just shorthand for accessing the data to make some code more readable then that will be fine:
mypolygon#coords
mean(mypolygon#coords[,1])
neither of those will make a copy.
However, if you do modify mypolygon, eg by changing #coords, you need to put the modified value back in the structure since a copy is made:
mypolygon#coords = mypolygon#coords * 1000
myBigMap#polygons[FRA][[1]]#Polygons[[1]] = mypolygon
I think that's a preferred solution, since its just as efficient as any kind of magic aliasing scheme and its explicit since there's no magic action-at-a-distance happening.
I don't think there's any way to alias parts of an object like the way you want to do.
Related
I'm working in R, and I'd like to define some variables that I (or one of my collaborators) cannot change. In C++ I'd do this:
const std::string path( "/projects/current" );
How do I do this in the R programming language?
Edit for clarity: I know that I can define strings like this in R:
path = "/projects/current"
What I really want is a language construct that guarantees that nobody can ever change the value associated with the variable named "path."
Edit to respond to comments:
It's technically true that const is a compile-time guarantee, but it would be valid in my mind that the R interpreter would throw stop execution with an error message. For example, look what happens when you try to assign values to a numeric constant:
> 7 = 3
Error in 7 = 3 : invalid (do_set) left-hand side to assignment
So what I really want is a language feature that allows you to assign values once and only once, and there should be some kind of error when you try to assign a new value to a variabled declared as const. I don't care if the error occurs at run-time, especially if there's no compilation phase. This might not technically be const by the Wikipedia definition, but it's very close. It also looks like this is not possible in the R programming language.
See lockBinding:
a <- 1
lockBinding("a", globalenv())
a <- 2
Error: cannot change value of locked binding for 'a'
Since you are planning to distribute your code to others, you could (should?) consider to create a package. Create within that package a NAMESPACE. There you can define variables that will have a constant value. At least to the functions that your package uses. Have a look at Tierney (2003) Name Space Management for R
I'm pretty sure that this isn't possible in R. If you're worried about accidentally re-writing the value then the easiest thing to do would be to put all of your constants into a list structure then you know when you're using those values. Something like:
my.consts<-list(pi=3.14159,e=2.718,c=3e8)
Then when you need to access them you have an aide memoir to know what not to do and also it pushes them out of your normal namespace.
Another place to ask would be R development mailing list. Hope this helps.
(Edited for new idea:) The bindenv functions provide an
experimental interface for adjustments to environments and bindings within environments. They allow for locking environments as well as individual bindings, and for linking a variable to a function.
This seems like the sort of thing that could give a false sense of security (like a const pointer to a non-const variable) but it might help.
(Edited for focus:) const is a compile-time guarantee, not a lock-down on bits in memory. Since R doesn't have a compile phase where it looks at all the code at once (it is built for interactive use), there's no way to check that future instructions won't violate any guarantee. If there's a right way to do this, the folks at the R-help list will know. My suggested workaround: fake your own compilation. Write a script to preprocess your R code that will manually substitute the corresponding literal for each appearance of your "constant" variables.
(Original:) What benefit are you hoping to get from having a variable that acts like a C "const"?
Since R has exclusively call-by-value semantics (unless you do some munging with environments), there isn't any reason to worry about clobbering your variables by calling functions on them. Adopting some sort of naming conventions or using some OOP structure is probably the right solution if you're worried about you and your collaborators accidentally using variables with the same names.
The feature you're looking for may exist, but I doubt it given the origin of R as a interactive environment where you'd want to be able to undo your actions.
R doesn't have a language constant feature. The list idea above is good; I personally use a naming convention like ALL_CAPS.
I took the answer below from this website
The simplest sort of R expression is just a constant value, typically a numeric value (a number) or a character value (a piece of text). For example, if we need to specify a number of seconds corresponding to 10 minutes, we specify a number.
> 600
[1] 600
If we need to specify the name of a file that we want to read data from, we specify the name as a character value. Character values must be surrounded by either double-quotes or single-quotes.
> "http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html"
[1] "http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html"
I store important metadata in R objects as attributes. I want to migrate my workflow to Julia and I am looking for a way to represent at least temporarily the attributes as something accessible by Julia. Then I can start thinking about extending the RData package to fill this data structure with actual objects' attributes.
I understand, that annotating with things like label or unit in DataFrame - I think the most important use for object' attributes - is probably going to be implemented in the DataFrames package some time (https://github.com/JuliaData/DataFrames.jl/issues/35). But I am asking about about more general solution, that doesn't depend on this specific use case.
For anyone interested, here is a related discussion in the RData package
In Julia it is ideomatic to define your own types - you'd simply make fields in the type to store the attributes. In R, the nice thing about storing things as attributes is that they don't affect how the type dispatches - e.g. adding metadata to a Vector doesn't make it stop behaving like a Vector. In julia, that approach is a little more complicated - you'd have to define the AbstractVector interface for your type https://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/interfaces/#man-interface-array-1 to have it behave like a Vector.
In essence, this means that the workflow solutions are a little different - e.g. often the attribute metadata in R is used to associate metadata to an object when it's returned from a function. An easy way to do something similar in Julia is to have the function return a tuple and assign the result to a tuple:
function ex()
res = rand(5)
met = "uniformly distributed random numbers"
res, met
end
result, metadata = ex()
I don't think there are plans to implement attributes like in R.
I want to change parts of a ggplot2 object made by a function and returned as a result, to remove the Y-axis label. No, the function does not allow that to be specified in the first place so I want to change it after the fact.
str(theObject) ## shows the nested structure with parts shortened to ".." and I want to be able to type something like:
theObject$A$B$C$myLabel <- ""
So how can I either make an str -like listing with full paths like that or perhaps draw a tree structure showing the inner working of the object?
Yes, I can figure things out using names(theObject) and finding which branch leads to what I am looking for, then switching to that branch and repeating but it looks like there could be a better automated way to find a leaf node such as:
leaf_str(obj=theObject, leaf="myLabel")
might return zero or more lines like:
theObject$A$B$C$myLabel
theObject$A$X$Y$Z$myLabel
Or, the entire structure could be put out as a series of such lines.
I have searched and found nothing quite like this. I can see lots of uses especially in teaching what an object is. Yes, S4 objects might also use # as well as $.
The
tree
function in the xfun package may be useful.
See here for more details
https://yihui.org/xfun/
Probably the most basic question on S4 classes imaginable here.
What is the simplest way to save an S4 class you have defined so that you can reuse it elsewhere. I have a project where I'm taking a number of very large datasets and compiling summary information from them into small S4 objects. Since I'll therefore be switching R sessions to create the summary object for each dataset, it'd be good to be able to load in the definition of the class from a saved object (or have it load automatically) rather than having to include the long definition of the object at the top of each script (which I assume is bad practice anyway because the code defining the object might become inconsistent).
So what's the syntax along the lines of saveclass("myClass"), loadclass("myclass") or am I just thinking about this in the wrong way?
setClass("track", representation(x="numeric", y="numeric"))
x <- new("track", x=1:4, y=5:8)
save as binary
fn <- tempfile()
save(x, ascii=FALSE, file=fn)
rm(x)
load(fn)
x
save as ASCII
save(x, ascii=TRUE, file=fn)
ASCII text representation from which to regenerate the data
dput(x, file=fn)
y <- dget(fn)
The original source can be found here.
From the question, I think you really do want to include the class definition at the top of each script (although not literally; see below), rather than saving a binary representation of the class definition and load that. The reason is the general one that binary representations are more fragile (subject to changes in software implementation) compared to simple text representations (for instance, in the not too distant past S4 objects were based on simple lists with a class attribute; more recently they have been built around an S4 'bit' set on the underlying C-level data representation).
Instead of copying and pasting the definition into each script, really the best practice is to included the class definition (and related methods) in an R package, and to load the package at the top of the script. It is not actually hard to write packages; an easy way to get started is to use Rstudio to create a 'New Project' as an 'R package'. Use a version number in the package to keep track of the specific version of the class definition / methods you're using, and version control (svn or git, for instance) to make it easy to track the changes / explorations you make as your class matures. Share with your colleagues and eventually the larger R community to let others benefit from your hard work and insight!
I'm working in R, and I'd like to define some variables that I (or one of my collaborators) cannot change. In C++ I'd do this:
const std::string path( "/projects/current" );
How do I do this in the R programming language?
Edit for clarity: I know that I can define strings like this in R:
path = "/projects/current"
What I really want is a language construct that guarantees that nobody can ever change the value associated with the variable named "path."
Edit to respond to comments:
It's technically true that const is a compile-time guarantee, but it would be valid in my mind that the R interpreter would throw stop execution with an error message. For example, look what happens when you try to assign values to a numeric constant:
> 7 = 3
Error in 7 = 3 : invalid (do_set) left-hand side to assignment
So what I really want is a language feature that allows you to assign values once and only once, and there should be some kind of error when you try to assign a new value to a variabled declared as const. I don't care if the error occurs at run-time, especially if there's no compilation phase. This might not technically be const by the Wikipedia definition, but it's very close. It also looks like this is not possible in the R programming language.
See lockBinding:
a <- 1
lockBinding("a", globalenv())
a <- 2
Error: cannot change value of locked binding for 'a'
Since you are planning to distribute your code to others, you could (should?) consider to create a package. Create within that package a NAMESPACE. There you can define variables that will have a constant value. At least to the functions that your package uses. Have a look at Tierney (2003) Name Space Management for R
I'm pretty sure that this isn't possible in R. If you're worried about accidentally re-writing the value then the easiest thing to do would be to put all of your constants into a list structure then you know when you're using those values. Something like:
my.consts<-list(pi=3.14159,e=2.718,c=3e8)
Then when you need to access them you have an aide memoir to know what not to do and also it pushes them out of your normal namespace.
Another place to ask would be R development mailing list. Hope this helps.
(Edited for new idea:) The bindenv functions provide an
experimental interface for adjustments to environments and bindings within environments. They allow for locking environments as well as individual bindings, and for linking a variable to a function.
This seems like the sort of thing that could give a false sense of security (like a const pointer to a non-const variable) but it might help.
(Edited for focus:) const is a compile-time guarantee, not a lock-down on bits in memory. Since R doesn't have a compile phase where it looks at all the code at once (it is built for interactive use), there's no way to check that future instructions won't violate any guarantee. If there's a right way to do this, the folks at the R-help list will know. My suggested workaround: fake your own compilation. Write a script to preprocess your R code that will manually substitute the corresponding literal for each appearance of your "constant" variables.
(Original:) What benefit are you hoping to get from having a variable that acts like a C "const"?
Since R has exclusively call-by-value semantics (unless you do some munging with environments), there isn't any reason to worry about clobbering your variables by calling functions on them. Adopting some sort of naming conventions or using some OOP structure is probably the right solution if you're worried about you and your collaborators accidentally using variables with the same names.
The feature you're looking for may exist, but I doubt it given the origin of R as a interactive environment where you'd want to be able to undo your actions.
R doesn't have a language constant feature. The list idea above is good; I personally use a naming convention like ALL_CAPS.
I took the answer below from this website
The simplest sort of R expression is just a constant value, typically a numeric value (a number) or a character value (a piece of text). For example, if we need to specify a number of seconds corresponding to 10 minutes, we specify a number.
> 600
[1] 600
If we need to specify the name of a file that we want to read data from, we specify the name as a character value. Character values must be surrounded by either double-quotes or single-quotes.
> "http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html"
[1] "http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html"