From vogranovich at jumptrading.com  Wed Aug 20 19:30:38 2008
From: vogranovich at jumptrading.com (Vadim Organovich)
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:30:38 -0500
Subject: [Rd] names of return value of median
Message-ID: <22D850BC39A25742977325ADDE208E7702669563C8@chiexchange02.w2k.jumptrading.com>

Dear R-devel,

The median() function assigns a name, "NA", to its return value if the return value is NA and the input vector has names, otherwise the names attribute is NULL. This looks strange and inconsistent with the behavior of mean().

This inconsistency becomes a problem when median() is used inside user code that relies on consistent naming convention.

Thanks,
Vadim

> foo <- c(x=as.numeric(NA), y=as.numeric(NA), z=as.numeric(NA))
> names(mean(foo))
NULL
> names(median(foo))
[1] NA

## no names in input
> foo <- rep(as.numeric(NA), 3)
> names(median(foo))
NULL


> version
               _
platform       i386-pc-mingw32
arch           i386
os             mingw32
system         i386, mingw32
status
major          2
minor          7.1
year           2008
month          06
day            23
svn rev        45970
language       R
version.string R version 2.7.1 (2008-06-23)
>

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[Rd] names of return value of median
Vadim Organovich