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> stringsAsFactors = FALSE is now default breaking a lot of packages I know this is popular on the surface, but it's going to break so many "reproducible" anal
by _Wintermute 6y ago
> stringsAsFactors = FALSE is now default breaking a lot of packages
I know this is popular on the surface, but it's going to break so many "reproducible" analyses from manuscripts and scientific studies.
- KKPMW 6y agoThere is a global option controlling this. So if anyones analysis is broken, they can still set options(stringsAsFactors=TRUE). Furthermore the functions that are inherently about factors (like expand.grid and as.data.frame.table) still use stringsAsFactors=TRUE.
- SifJar 6y ago> So if anyones analysis is broken, they can still set options(stringsAsFactors=TRUE). But what are the chances that someone stumbling upon supposedly reproducible analysis happens to know that in R >4.0.0 they need to do this? Especially if the original analysis didn't even specify that it was originally run on R <4.0.0
- einpoklum 6y agoThere's a good chance they'll assume they need an R version from when the analysis was published, or to enable some sort of "old version compatibility mode" (does R have that?)
- hugh-avherald 6y agoBut it's a major version change and that's what major version changes are for.
- kachnuv_ocasek 6y agoReproducibles should be tied to specific versions of software or even OS and hardware. So no, this is not going to break correctly designed analyses. It's only going to break those which were not reproducible in the first place.
- _Wintermute 6y agoHence the quotation marks, the state of software engineering in many scientific fields isn't very good, you'll be lucky if people list which package versions they used.
- kachnuv_ocasek 6y agoFair enough. I might have misunderstood your remark originally, though the point stands, of course.