Type and size stability

Examples

To make these ideas concrete, let’s apply them to a few base functions:

1. mean() is trivially type-stable and size-stable because it always returns a double vector of length 1 (or it throws an error).

2. Surprisingly, median() is type-unstable:

   vec_ptype_show(median(c(1L, 1L)))
   #> Prototype: double
   vec_ptype_show(median(c(1L, 1L, 1L)))
   #> Prototype: integer

   It is, however, size-stable, since it always returns a vector of length 1.

3. sapply() is type-unstable because you can’t predict the output type only knowing the input types:

   vec_ptype_show(sapply(1L, function(x) c(x, x)))
   #> Prototype: integer[,1]
   vec_ptype_show(sapply(integer(), function(x) c(x, x)))
   #> Prototype: list

   It’s not quite size-stable; vec_size(sapply(x, f)) is vec_size(x) for vectors but not for matrices (the output is transposed) or data frames (it iterates over the columns).

4. vapply() is a type-stable version of sapply() because vec_ptype_show(vapply(x, fn, template)) is always vec_ptype_show(template).
   It is size-unstable for the same reasons as sapply().

5. c() is type-unstable because c(x, y) doesn’t always output the same type as c(y, x).

   vec_ptype_show(c(NA, Sys.Date()))
   #> Prototype: double
   vec_ptype_show(c(Sys.Date(), NA))
   #> Prototype: date

   c() is almost always length-stable because length(c(x, y)) almost always equals length(x) + length(y). One common source of instability here is dealing with non-vectors (see the later section “Non-vectors”):

   env <- new.env(parent = emptyenv())
   length(env)
   #> [1] 0
   length(mean)
   #> [1] 1
   length(c(env, mean))
   #> [1] 2

6. paste(x1, x2) is length-stable because length(paste(x1, x2)) equals max(length(x1), length(x2)). However, it doesn’t follow the usual arithmetic recycling rules because paste(1:2, 1:3) doesn’t generate a warning.

7. ifelse() is length-stable because length(ifelse(cond, true, false)) is always length(cond). ifelse() is type-unstable because the output type depends on the value of cond:

   vec_ptype_show(ifelse(NA, 1L, 1L))
   #> Prototype: logical
   vec_ptype_show(ifelse(FALSE, 1L, 1L))
   #> Prototype: integer

8. read.csv(file) is type-unstable and size-unstable because, while you know it will return a data frame, you don’t know what columns it will return or how many rows it will have. Similarly, df[[i]] is not type-stable because the result depends on the value of i. There are many important functions that can not be made type-stable or size-stable!

With this understanding of type- and size-stability in hand, we’ll use them to analyse some base R functions in greater depth and then propose alternatives with better properties.

Atomic vectors

If we only consider atomic vectors, c() is type-stable because it uses a hierarchy of types: character > complex > double > integer > logical.

c(FALSE, 1L, 2.5)
#> [1] 0.0 1.0 2.5

vec_c() obeys similar rules:

vec_c(FALSE, 1L, 2.5)
#> [1] 0.0 1.0 2.5

But it does not automatically coerce to character vectors or lists:

c(FALSE, "x")
#> [1] "FALSE" "x"
vec_c(FALSE, "x")
#> Error in `vec_c()`:
#> ! Can't combine `..1` <logical> and `..2` <character>.

c(FALSE, list(1))
#> [[1]]
#> [1] FALSE
#> 
#> [[2]]
#> [1] 1
vec_c(FALSE, list(1))
#> Error in `vec_c()`:
#> ! Can't combine `..1` <logical> and `..2` <list>.

Incompatible vectors and non-vectors

In general, most base methods do not throw an error:

c(10.5, factor("x"))
#> [1] 10.5  1.0

If the inputs aren’t vectors, c() automatically puts them in a list:

c(mean, globalenv())
#> [[1]]
#> function (x, ...) 
#> UseMethod("mean")
#> <bytecode: 0x103a05448>
#> <environment: namespace:base>
#> 
#> [[2]]
#> <environment: R_GlobalEnv>

For numeric versions, this depends on the order of inputs. Version first is an error, otherwise the input is wrapped in a list:

c(getRversion(), "x")
#> Error: invalid version specification 'x'

c("x", getRversion())
#> [[1]]
#> [1] "x"
#> 
#> [[2]]
#> [1] 4 3 1

vec_c() throws an error if the inputs are not vectors or not automatically coercible:

vec_c(mean, globalenv())
#> Error in `vec_c()`:
#> ! `..1` must be a vector, not a function.

vec_c(Sys.Date(), factor("x"), "x")
#> Error in `vec_c()`:
#> ! Can't combine `..1` <date> and `..2` <factor<bf275>>.

Factors

Combining two factors returns an integer vector:

fa <- factor("a")
fb <- factor("b")

c(fa, fb)
#> [1] a b
#> Levels: a b

(This is documented in c() but is still undesirable.)

vec_c() returns a factor taking the union of the levels. This behaviour is motivated by pragmatics: there are many places in base R that automatically convert character vectors to factors, so enforcing stricter behaviour would be unnecessarily onerous. (This is backed up by experience with dplyr::bind_rows(), which is stricter and is a common source of user difficulty.)

vec_c(fa, fb)
#> [1] a b
#> Levels: a b
vec_c(fb, fa)
#> [1] b a
#> Levels: b a

Date-times

c() strips the time zone associated with date-times:

datetime_nz <- as.POSIXct("2020-01-01 09:00", tz = "Pacific/Auckland")
c(datetime_nz)
#> [1] "2020-01-01 09:00:00 NZDT"

This behaviour is documented in ?DateTimeClasses but is the source of considerable user pain.

vec_c() preserves time zones:

vec_c(datetime_nz)
#> [1] "2020-01-01 09:00:00 NZDT"

What time zone should the output have if inputs have different time zones? One option would be to be strict and force the user to manually align all the time zones. However, this is onerous (particularly because there’s no easy way to change the time zone in base R), so vctrs chooses to use the first non-local time zone:

datetime_local <- as.POSIXct("2020-01-01 09:00")
datetime_houston <- as.POSIXct("2020-01-01 09:00", tz = "US/Central")

vec_c(datetime_local, datetime_houston, datetime_nz)
#> [1] "2020-01-01 08:00:00 CST" "2020-01-01 09:00:00 CST"
#> [3] "2019-12-31 14:00:00 CST"
vec_c(datetime_houston, datetime_nz)
#> [1] "2020-01-01 09:00:00 CST" "2019-12-31 14:00:00 CST"
vec_c(datetime_nz, datetime_houston)
#> [1] "2020-01-01 09:00:00 NZDT" "2020-01-02 04:00:00 NZDT"

Dates and date-times

Combining dates and date-times with c() gives silently incorrect results:

date <- as.Date("2020-01-01")
datetime <- as.POSIXct("2020-01-01 09:00")

c(date, datetime)
#> [1] "2020-01-01" "2020-01-01"
c(datetime, date)
#> [1] "2020-01-01 09:00:00 EST" "2019-12-31 19:00:00 EST"

This behaviour arises because neither c.Date() nor c.POSIXct() check that all inputs are of the same type.

vec_c() uses a standard set of rules to avoid this problem. When you mix dates and date-times, vctrs returns a date-time and converts dates to date-times at midnight (in the timezone of the date-time).

vec_c(date, datetime)
#> [1] "2020-01-01 00:00:00 EST" "2020-01-01 09:00:00 EST"
vec_c(date, datetime_nz)
#> [1] "2020-01-01 00:00:00 NZDT" "2020-01-01 09:00:00 NZDT"

Missing values

If a missing value comes at the beginning of the inputs, c() falls back to the internal behaviour, which strips all attributes:

c(NA, fa)
#> [1] NA  1
c(NA, date)
#> [1]    NA 18262
c(NA, datetime)
#> [1]         NA 1577887200

vec_c() takes a different approach treating a logical vector consisting only of NA as the unspecified() class which can be converted to any other 1d type:

vec_c(NA, fa)
#> [1] <NA> a   
#> Levels: a
vec_c(NA, date)
#> [1] NA           "2020-01-01"
vec_c(NA, datetime)
#> [1] NA                        "2020-01-01 09:00:00 EST"

Data frames

Because it is almost always length-stable, c() combines data frames column wise (into a list):

df1 <- data.frame(x = 1)
df2 <- data.frame(x = 2)
str(c(df1, df1))
#> List of 2
#>  $ x: num 1
#>  $ x: num 1

vec_c() is size-stable, which implies it will row-bind data frames:

vec_c(df1, df2)
#>   x
#> 1 1
#> 2 2

Matrices and arrays

The same reasoning applies to matrices:

m <- matrix(1:4, nrow = 2)
c(m, m)
#> [1] 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
vec_c(m, m)
#>      [,1] [,2]
#> [1,]    1    3
#> [2,]    2    4
#> [3,]    1    3
#> [4,]    2    4

One difference is that vec_c() will “broadcast” a vector to match the dimensions of a matrix:

c(m, 1)
#> [1] 1 2 3 4 1

vec_c(m, 1)
#>      [,1] [,2]
#> [1,]    1    3
#> [2,]    2    4
#> [3,]    1    1

Implementation

The basic implementation of vec_c() is reasonably simple. We first figure out the properties of the output, i.e. the common type and total size, and then allocate it with vec_init(), and then insert each input into the correct place in the output.

vec_c <- function(...) {
  args <- compact(list2(...))

  ptype <- vec_ptype_common(!!!args)
  if (is.null(ptype))
    return(NULL)

  ns <- map_int(args, vec_size)
  out <- vec_init(ptype, sum(ns))

  pos <- 1
  for (i in seq_along(ns)) {
    n <- ns[[i]]
    
    x <- vec_cast(args[[i]], to = ptype)
    vec_slice(out, pos:(pos + n - 1)) <- x
    pos <- pos + n
  }

  out
}

(The real vec_c() is a bit more complicated in order to handle inner and outer names).