From bates at stat.wisc.edu  Mon Oct 20 19:52:13 2003
From: bates at stat.wisc.edu (Douglas Bates)
Date: Mon Oct 20 19:51:19 2003
Subject: [Rd] R 1.80 version
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0310191139380.1541-100000@smelt.biostat.umn.edu>
References: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0310191139380.1541-100000@smelt.biostat.umn.edu>
Message-ID: <6rvfqjdcfm.fsf@bates4.stat.wisc.edu>

Xiaoping Jin <xiaopinj@biostat.umn.edu> writes:

> Thank for your quick response. I have known "ifelse" command and
> another alternate way to do that. But I wonder why the same command
> lines can work in R 1.40 version very quickly, but it seems that
> those lines does not work in R 1.80 version well. Is there something
> different?

So apparently you wish to report as a bug the fact that R 1.8.0 is
different from R 1.4.0 (note: there are no versions 1.40 and 1.80 of
R).  Although that is true we do not regard it as a bug.  In fact, we
are well aware of the fact that there are differences between
different versions of R.  That is more-or-less why we give them
different version numbers and why we go to a great deal of effort to
document what has changed between versions.

You also seem to be claiming that on some vaguely defined calculations
on unknown data using an unknown machine under unknown load conditions
R-1.8.0 runs more slowly than R-1.4.0.  Do you honestly expect us to
be able to respond to such a claim?  With that much information to go
on we should be able to nail down the problem in a couple of minutes,
right?

Let's recap here.  You filed a bug report about version 1.80 of R, a
version that doesn't exist.  I asked you to read the section of the
FAQ on "What is a bug?" and also suggested that you you could
accomplish what you apparently want to do in a much easier way.

Did you read "What is a bug?" and "How to report a bug.", especially
the parts on

    The most important principle in reporting a bug is to report
    _facts_, not hypotheses or categorizations.

and 

   It is very useful to try and find simple examples that produce
   apparently the same bug.

If you can provide us with a reproducible example of the behavior you
are experiencing then we can check it out.  But without a reproducible
example, a bug report like this is just a waste of our time.


[Rd] R 1.80 version
Douglas Bates