From sambler at linkedin.com  Sat Nov 22 20:59:48 2014
From: sambler at linkedin.com (Stuart Ambler)
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 19:59:48 +0000
Subject: [Rd] R string comparisons may vary with platform (plain text)
Message-ID: <D0962B34.6441%sambler@linkedin.com>

A colleague?s R program behaved differently when I ran it, and we thought
we traced it probably to different results from string comparisons as
below, with different R versions.  However the platforms also differed.  A
friend ran it on a few machines and found that the comparison behavior
didn?t correlate with R version, but rather with platform.

I wonder if you?ve seen this.  If it?s not some setting I?m unaware of,
maybe someone should look into it.  Sorry I haven?t taken the time to read
the source code myself.

Thanks,
Stuart

R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25) -- "Frisbee Sailing"
Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Sys.getlocale()
[1] 
"LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8;LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF
-8;LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8;LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8;LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8;LC_
NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8;LC_IDENTIFICA
TION=C"

"-1" > "1"
[1] TRUE

"-1" <"1"
[1] FALSE

"1" < "-1"
[1] TRUE

"1" < "-"
[1] FALSE

Vs.

R version 3.1.1 (2014-07-10) ? ?Sock it to Me"
Platform: x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Sys.getlocale()
[1] 
"LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_US.utf8;LC_COLLATE=en_US.utf8
;LC_MONETARY=en_US.utf8;LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8;LC_PAPER=en_US.utf8;LC_NAME
=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.utf8;LC_IDENTIFICATION
=C"

"-1" > "1"
[1] FALSE

"-1" <"1"
[1] TRUE

"1" < "-1"
[1] FALSE

"1" < "-"
[1] FALSE



[Rd] R string comparisons may vary with platform (plain text)
Stuart Ambler