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vetr (version 0.2.18)

vet: Verify Objects Meet Structural Requirements

Description

Use vetting expressions to enforce structural requirements for objects. tev is a version of vet compatible with magrittr pipes.

Usage

vet(
  target,
  current,
  env = parent.frame(),
  format = "text",
  stop = FALSE,
  settings = NULL
)

tev( current, target, env = parent.frame(), format = "text", stop = FALSE, settings = NULL )

Value

TRUE if validation succeeds, otherwise varies according to value chosen with parameter stop

Arguments

target

a template, a vetting expression, or a compound expression

current

an object to vet

env

the environment to match calls and evaluate vetting expressions in; will be ignored if an environment is also specified via vetr_settings(). Defaults to calling frame.

format

character(1L), controls the format of the return value for vet, in case of failure. One of:

  • "text": (default) character(1L) message for use elsewhere in code

  • "full": character(1L) the full error message used in "stop" mode, but actually returned instead of thrown as an error

  • "raw": character(N) least processed version of the error message with none of the formatting or surrounding verbiage

stop

TRUE or FALSE whether to call stop() on failure or not (default)

settings

a settings list as produced by vetr_settings(), or NULL to use the default settings

Vetting Expressions

Vetting expressions can be template tokens, standard tokens, or any combination of template and standard tokens combined with && and/or ||. Template tokens are R objects that define the required structure, much like the FUN.VALUE argument to vapply(). Standard tokens are tokens that contain the . symbol and are used to vet values.

If you do use the . symbol in your vetting expressions in your packages, you will need to include utils::globalVariables(".") as a top-level call to avoid the "no visible binding for global variable '.'"' R CMD check NOTE.

See vignette('vetr', package='vetr') and examples for details on how to craft vetting expressions.

Details

tev just reverses the target and current arguments for better integration with magrittr. There are two major caveats:

  • error messages will be less useful since you will get . instead of the deparsed call

  • x \\%>\\% tev(y) is much slower than vet(y, x) (or even tev(x, y))

See Also

vetr() for a version optimized to vet function arguments, alike() for how templates are used, vet_token() for how to specify custom error messages and also for predefined validation tokens for common use cases, all_bw() for fast bounds checks.

Examples

Run this code
## template vetting
vet(numeric(2L), runif(2))
vet(numeric(2L), runif(3))
vet(numeric(2L), letters)
try(vet(numeric(2L), letters, stop=TRUE))

## `tev` just reverses target and current for use with maggrittr
if (FALSE) {
if(require(magrittr)) {
  runif(2) %>% tev(numeric(2L))
  runif(3) %>% tev(numeric(2L))
}
}
## Zero length templates are wild cards
vet(numeric(), runif(2))
vet(numeric(), runif(100))
vet(numeric(), letters)

## This extends to data.frames
iris.tpl <- iris[0,]   # zero row matches any # of rows
iris.1 <- iris[1:10,]
iris.2 <- iris[1:10, c(1,2,3,5,4)]  # change col order
vet(iris.tpl, iris.1)
vet(iris.tpl, iris.2)

## Short (<100 length) integer-like numerics will
## pass for integer
vet(integer(), c(1, 2, 3))
vet(integer(), c(1, 2, 3) + 0.1)

## Nested templates; note, in packages you should consider
## defining templates outside of `vet` or `vetr` so that
## they are computed on load rather that at runtime
tpl <- list(numeric(1L), matrix(integer(), 3))
val.1 <- list(runif(1), rbind(1:10, 1:10, 1:10))
val.2 <- list(runif(1), cbind(1:10, 1:10, 1:10))
vet(tpl, val.1)
vet(tpl, val.2)

## See `example(alike)` for more template examples

## Standard tokens allow you to check values
vet(. > 0, runif(10))
vet(. > 0, -runif(10))

## Zero length token results are considered TRUE,
## as is the case with `all(logical(0))`
vet(. > 0, numeric())

## `all_bw` is like `isTRUE(all(. >= x & . <= y))`, but
## ~10x faster for long vectors:
vet(all_bw(., 0, 1), runif(1e6) + .1)

## You can combine templates and standard tokens with
## `&&` and/or `||`
vet(numeric(2L) && . > 0, runif(2))
vet(numeric(2L) && . > 0, runif(10))
vet(numeric(2L) && . > 0, -runif(2))

## Using pre-defined tokens (see `?vet_token`)
vet(INT.1, 1)
vet(INT.1, 1:2)
vet(INT.1 && . %in% 0:1 || LGL.1, TRUE)
vet(INT.1 && . %in% 0:1 || LGL.1, 1)
vet(INT.1 && . %in% 0:1 || LGL.1, NA)

## Vetting expressions can be assembled from previously
## defined tokens
scalar.num.pos <- quote(numeric(1L) && . > 0)
foo.or.bar <- quote(character(1L) && . %in% c('foo', 'bar'))
vet.exp <- quote(scalar.num.pos || foo.or.bar)

vet(vet.exp, 42)
vet(scalar.num.pos || foo.or.bar, 42)  # equivalently
vet(vet.exp, "foo")
vet(vet.exp, "baz")

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