.message of the check_
functions is now interpolated with string_magic()l0 has been removed. Now
check_arg(x, "vector") (or the like) receiving something
0-length in input will not send an error (in the previous version,
l0 was required). Vector length can still be checked with
the len(a,b) mechanism (thanks to @kylebutts for early bug reports).to increase clarity, now the problem leading to an error is
displayed in a newline with the prefix PROBLEM in
uppercase
improve clarity of error messages involving lower than/greater than
improve the number of items suggested by
suggest_item
fix display problem in fsignif
increase the requirement of stringmagic version to
be compatible with R v3.5.0
the check_arg family of functions now correctly
reports the full call stack when requested
fix bug: wrong argument name displayed when
check_value was used with the argument
.arg_name and an error was produced because a variable was
missing in a formula. Thanks to @kylebutts, #4.
New set of hook error and warning functions for
reporting in complex internal functions. These are set_hook
to set a function as the hook and
stop_hook/warn_hook error and warning
functions used to report as if they were called from the hooked
function.
warni and stopi for warning and stop
functions with character interpolation using stringmagic
path has been added to check_arg.
It is used to check paths.fit_screen so that it does not mess with white
spaces.check_arg_plus and
check_value_plus become check_set_arg and
check_set_value to improve clarity.fsignif now displays trailing 0s appropriately and
is neutral to character vectors (instead of throwing an error).
the comparison types now can evaluate values from the calling frame:
z = 32
x = 77
try(check_value(x, "numeric scalar LE{z}"))
#> Error: in check_value(x, "numeric scalar LE{z}"):
#> Value 'x' must be a numeric scalar lower than, or equal to, 32. Problem: it is strictly greater than 32.stop_up now accepts the argument msg which is an extra
message displayed right after the error message.in check_arg_plus conversion of factors to
characters now works properly.
Fix bug in stop_up when the argument up
was not appropriately set by the user.
fix bug in sfill regarding the combined usage of
anchor and right in special
circumstances.
now sfill accepts 0-length vectors.
new exported function: fit_screen.
fix bugs in sfill:
when an anchor was provided and all characters before that were of the same length.
when an anchor was provided and the fill was from the right.
check_family: objects are now returned
invisibly.
new function fsignif which is an alias of
signif_plus.
.prefix or .argname of
check_value.check_value when the
argument could not be evaluated.validate_dots: nicer messages.NA tolerance
for the main classes vector and matrix
(opposite to the previous behavior). The new keywords NO NA
replace the former keywords NA OK for these classes.test = function(x){
check_arg(x, "numeric vector")
}
# Before (version <= 1.1.0)
test(c(5, NA)) # => Error
# Now (version >= 1.2.0)
test(c(5, NA)) # => is OKlogical type is requested.test = function(x){
check_arg(x, "logical scalar")
}
# Before (version <= 1.1.0)
test(0) # => is OK
# Now (version >= 1.2.0)
test(0) # => Error, must be logicalThe new behavior is equivalent to the previous behavior when the type
was strict logical. Now strict logical has been removed and
loose logical has been introduced which accepts 0 and 1.
Why this change? I remarked that when you allow arguments of very
different types, one of which was a logical scalar, it was really useful
to distinguish between them safely using isTRUE or
is.logical. With the previous default behavior you could
have a 0 or 1 that would prevent you from doing that. Of course you
could use strict logical to trigger that behavior but it
was non-intuitive.
In check_value: you can use the new argument
.prefix to design the error message.
Function check_value_plus now returns the value of
the element it has checked and possibly modified.
x = "t"
y = check_value_plus(x, "match(This, Is, Raw)")
y # => "This"
fml = ~head(Petal.Length)
z = check_value_plus(fml[[2]], "evalset numeric vector", .data = iris)
zsfill now accepts NAs.Error messages in check_value have been
improved.
enumerate_items now returns the empty string when
0-length vectors are in input.
The main class match could lead the argument to lose
its attributes (like names), now corrected.
Vectors containing only NAs when NAs are tolerated could lead to a wrong error message, now corrected.
Bug when check_value_plus was called from the global
environment and an error was triggered.
Bug when check_value was called and
.arg_name was provided.
Bug when the “...” argument contained
NULL values.
The developer mode now never applies to functions from packages using dreamerr
Behavior of argument nmax in
enumerate_items is fixed.
Type conversion of matrices returned a vector, now corrected.
sfill: formatting function for strings. Fills a
character string up to the required length. Helps to form nice
messages.
set_up: sets the argument up
semi-globally (i.e. throughout all calls within a function).
set_check: turns on/off argument checking
semi-globally (i.e. throughout all calls within a function).
.message), you can use the special character
__ARG__. If found, it will be replaced by the appropriate
argument name.Message informing no NA tolerance in the types is prompted only when the error comes from NA values.
The developer mode catches more errors and provide more suggestions.
check_value now doesn’t throw an error for missing
.x.
.call_up becomes .up – retro-compatibility
is NOT ensured.Small bug that could occur for the types
"integer scalar na ok" with the argument equal to
NA.
Important bug when using features requiring evaluations in the environment. Now the default environment is set up appropriately.
Bug when using var(data,env) in a
formula class with missing data.
Very sneaky bug when badly forming a call to
check_arg to check ... in nested functions is
now caught.
In enumerate_items, when there were many elements,
quote = TRUE led to quote the XX others that
shouldn’t be quoted. Now corrected.
In the formula class, if a variable was passed as a
Formula (notice the capital F), this caused an error if
one-sidedness or two-sidedness were to be checked.
Bug when in n_letter when negative numbers are in.
This bug propagated into check_arg.
This package is the outcome of over a decade of coding and developing packages in R. As a package developer I always wanted my code to be “safe”: so that if a user provides arguments of the good type the functions always work, and if there’s an argument of the wrong type then an informative error message is shown.
The big problem is that error handling is extremely time consuming, especially if you want to specify informative error messages stating clearly where the problem comes from. This problem is compounded when you want to offer the user flexible arguments that can be of many types. To do error handling properly in such situations is a nightmare: you end up with big if/else trees with a lot of different messages. And it doesn’t improve the speed of your code! So you have little incentives to invest time in proper error handling.
This is why I developed this function. It’s one line of code, and it does all the work for you. From the developer side it’s super simple, and from the user side, s/he ends up with extremely informative error messages therefore saving a lot of time in debugging.