From p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk  Tue Aug 31 16:40:57 2004
From: p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk (Peter Dalgaard)
Date: Tue Aug 31 16:46:20 2004
Subject: [Rd] model.matrix.default chokes on backquote (PR#7202)
In-Reply-To: <20040830013521.DDAEC39AA@mprdmxin.myway.com>
References: <20040830013521.DDAEC39AA@mprdmxin.myway.com>
Message-ID: <x2vfez8j5y.fsf@biostat.ku.dk>

"Gabor Grothendieck" <ggrothendieck@myway.com> writes:

> Peter Dalgaard <p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk> writes:
> >
> > "Gabor Grothendieck" <ggrothendieck@myway.com> writes:
> > 
> > > > > as.character(attr(terms(`a(b)`~`c(d)`),"variables"))
> > > > [1] "list" "`a(b)`" "`c(d)`"
> > > >
> > > > whereas for instance
> > > >
> > > > > sapply(attr(terms(`a(b)`~`c(d)`),"variables")[-1],as.character)
> > > > [1] "a(b)" "c(d)"
> > >
> > > 1. That is quite subtle but a fix based on that would appear to
> > > solve it.
> > 
> > Hmm, not quite. I tried, and terms like offset(foo) gets me in
> > trouble. Probably, I was fixing the wrong end of the original problem:
> > In the comparisons, we can't have one side with backquotes and the
> > other without them. That doesn't have to mean that they should be
> > removed from both sides, and indeed it would get us in trouble if
> > someone was perverse enough to do things like
> > 
> > y ~ `offset(foo)` + offset(foo)
> > 
> > I.e. perhaps the real issue is that names(data) gets generated without
> > backquotes.
> > 
> > Anyways, this is a real can of worms and I'm not sure we're not too
> > close to 2.0.0 to start tampering with it...
> 
> How about a partial fix that does not address pathological 
> cases where the variable names themselves have embedded 
> backquotes but does address the common cases such as:
> 
> 	y <- ts(1:10); x1 <- y^2; x2 <- y^4
> 	lm(`lag(y)` ~ ., cbind(lag(y), x1, diff(x2)) )
> 
> without having to resort to:
> 
> 	lm(lag.y ~ ., cbind(lag.y = lag(y), x1, diff(x2)) )
> 

Hmm, I can get that example to run by using sapply(...,deparse)[-1] in
about three places, without breaking make check except that it choked
on one example in survival which needs width=500 added. 

Still doesn't solve the ~ `offset(foo)` + offset(foo) issue though,
and I'm  beginning to suspect that that would require a complete
redesign. Thing is that `offset(foo)` only makes sense if the column
is named "offset(foo)" with no ``, but model.frame and friends will
turn an offset(foo) term into a column with exactly the same name.  

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907


[Rd] model.matrix.default chokes on backquote (PR#7202)
Peter Dalgaard