checkNames {Ecfun}

Check and return names

Description

Check and return names. If names are not provided or are not unique, write a message and return make.names consistent with warn and unique.

Usage

checkNames(x, warn=0, unique=TRUE, 
   avoid=character(0), 
   message0=head(deparse(substitute(x), 25), 2), ...)

Arguments

x

an R object suitable for names

warn

Numeric code for how to treat problems, consistent with the argument warn in options: Negative to ignore, 0 to save and print later, 1 to print as they occur, 2 or greater to convert to errors.

unique

logical: TRUE to check that names(x) are unique. Fix any duplicates with make.names.

avoid

a vector of regular expressions to avoid adding in the output of make.names with a companion replacement when found.

Thus, length(avoid) must be a nonnegative even integer, with avoid[2*j-1] providing the pattern for regexpr and sub, and avoid[2*j] providing the replacement. See the second example.

message0

Base to prepend to any message

...

optional arguments for make.names

Details

1. namex <- names(x)

2. Check per warn and unique

3. Return an appropriate version of namex

Value

a character vector of the same length as x. If any problem is found, this character vector will have an attribute message describing the problem found. Message checking considers unique but ignores warn.

Author(s)

Spencer Graves

See Also

names make.names options for warn

Examples

##
## 1.  standard operation with no names 
## 
tst1 <- checkNames(1:2)

# check 
tst1. <- make.names(character(2), unique=TRUE)
attr(tst1., 'message') <- paste(
  "1:2:  names = NULL; returning", 
  "make.names(character(length(x))), TRUE)")

all.equal(tst1, tst1.)

##
## 2.  avoid=c('\\.0$', '\\.1$')
##
tst2 <-checkNames(1:2, 
    avoid=c('\\.0$', '.2', 
            '\\.1$', '.3') )

# check 
tst2. <-c('X', 'X.3')
attr(tst2., 'message') <- paste(
  "1:2:  names = NULL; returning", 
  "make.names(character(length(x))), TRUE)")

all.equal(tst2, tst2.)