30  vectorlist from anylist

ImportantDisclaimer

These packages (Note 1) are a one-person project undergoing rapid evolution. Backward compatibility (per Hadley Wickham) is provided as a courtesy rather than a guarantee.

Until further notice, these packages should

  • not be used as the basis for research grant applications or referenced in final research progress reports,
  • not be cited as an actively maintained tool in a peer-reviewed manuscript,
  • not be used to support or fulfill requirements for pursuing an academic degree.

In addition, work primarily based on these packages (Note 1) should not be presented at academic conferences or similar scholarly venues.

Furthermore, a person’s ability to use these packages (Note 1) does not necessarily imply an understanding of their underlying mechanisms. Accordingly, demonstration of their use alone should not be considered sufficient evidence of expertise, nor should it be credited as a basis for academic promotion or advancement.

These statements do not apply to the contributors (Tip 1) to these packages (Note 1) with respect to their specific contributions.

These statements do not apply when the maintainer of these packages (Note 1), Tingting Zhan, is credited as the first author, the lead author, and/or the corresponding author in a peer-reviewed manuscript, or as the Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator in a research grant application and/or a final research progress report.

These statements are advisory in nature and do not modify or restrict the rights granted under the GNU General Public License https://www.r-project.org/Licenses/.

Note

The examples in Chapter 30 require

library(groupedHyperframe)

Package groupedHyperframe (v0.4.0, GPL-2) defines a derived S3 class 'vectorlist', for vector-list, which inherits from the classes 'anylist' (Chapter 11), 'listof' and 'list' and is assigned with additional attributes,

Table 30.1 summarizes the S3 methods for the class 'vectorlist' in package groupedHyperframe (v0.4.0, GPL-2),

Table 30.1: S3 methods groupedHyperframe::*.vectorlist (v0.4.0)
visible generic isS4
print.vectorlist FALSE base::print FALSE
t.vectorlist FALSE base::t FALSE

30.1 Creation & Print

The function as.vectorlist() inspects whether the input qualifies as a vector-list (Section 30.2), and if true, appends the derived class 'vectorlist' to the returned value.

The S3 method print.vectorlist() prints the vital information of a vector-list.

Listing 30.1 converts the hypercolumn Kovesi$values (Section 9.16) into a character vector-list and prints its vital information.

Listing 30.1: Data: a vectorlist object Kovesi_v 
spatstat.data::Kovesi$values |>
  as.vectorlist(mode = 'character')
A 'vectorlist' of 41 vectors 
Storage Mode: character 
Individual Vector Length: 256

Listing 30.2 creates a toy numeric vector-list toy_vecL and prints its vital information. Listing 30.3 prints each of the numeric-vector members in the vector-list toy_vecL.

Listing 30.2: Data: a toy numeric vectorlist 
set.seed(12); toy_vecL = replicate(n = 5L, expr = rnorm(n = 6L), simplify = FALSE) |> 
  as.vectorlist(mode = 'numeric')
toy_vecL
A 'vectorlist' of 5 vectors 
Storage Mode: numeric 
Individual Vector Length: 6
Listing 30.3: Review: function print.default() on vectorlist 
toy_vecL |>
  print.default()
[[1]]
[1] -1.4805676  1.5771695 -0.9567445 -0.9200052 -1.9976421 -0.2722960

[[2]]
[1] -0.3153487 -0.6282552 -0.1064639  0.4280148 -0.7777196 -1.2938823

[[3]]
[1] -0.77956651  0.01195176 -0.15241624 -0.70346425  1.18887916  0.34051227

[[4]]
[1]  0.5069682 -0.2933051  0.2236414  2.0072015  1.0119791 -0.3024592

[[5]]
[1] -1.0252448 -0.2673848 -0.1991057  0.1311226  0.1457999  0.3620647

attr(,"class")
[1] "vectorlist" "anylist"    "listof"     "list"      
attr(,"mode")
[1] "numeric"

30.2 Validity

The function is.vectorlist() inspects whether all elements of an anylist (Chapter 11)

The hypercolumn Kovesi$values (Section 9.16) qualifies as a 'character' vector-list (Listing 30.4), but not as a 'numeric' vector-list (Listing 30.5).

Listing 30.4: Example: function is.vectorlist() 
spatstat.data::Kovesi$values |>
  is.vectorlist(mode = 'character') |>
  stopifnot()
Listing 30.5: Example: function is.vectorlist() 
spatstat.data::Kovesi$values |>
  is.vectorlist(mode = 'numeric')
[1] FALSE

30.3 Transpose

The S3 method t.vectorlist() transposes a vector-list into another vector-list, with the length and lengths of the input swapped. Table 30.2 explains the rational of using the S3 generic function t() (R version 4.5.3 (2026-03-11)).

Table 30.2: Rational of “Transpose”
base:::t.default() t.vectorlist()
Input & Output matrix vectorlist
Swaps ncol & nrow length & lengths

Listing 30.6 transposes the vector-list in Listing 30.1.

Listing 30.6: Example: function t.vectorlist() 
Kovesi_v_t = spatstat.data::Kovesi$values |>
  as.vectorlist(mode = 'character') |> 
  t()
Kovesi_v_t
A 'vectorlist' of 256 vectors 
Storage Mode: character 
Individual Vector Length: 41

The motivation of the derived class 'vectorlist' and the S3 method t.vectorlist() is that calling the S3 method with.hyperframe() (v3.7.3, GPL (>= 2)) repeatedly (Listing 30.7) is slow.

Listing 30.7: Review: function with.hyperframe() (Listing 30.6)
Code 
spatstat.data::Kovesi |> 
  spatstat.geom::with.hyperframe(expr = values[1L]) |>
  identical(y = Kovesi_v_t[[1L]]) |>
  stopifnot()
spatstat.data::Kovesi |> 
  spatstat.geom::with.hyperframe(expr = values[2L]) |>
  identical(y = Kovesi_v_t[[2L]]) |>
  stopifnot()
spatstat.data::Kovesi |> 
  spatstat.geom::with.hyperframe(expr = values[256L]) |>
  identical(y = Kovesi_v_t[[256L]]) |>
  stopifnot()

The derived class 'vectorlist' is not supported as a hypercolumn in a hyper data frame (Chapter 16) as of package spatstat.geom v3.7.3, GPL (>= 2). Listing 30.8 calls the S3 method t.vectorlist() explicitly as a workaround before package spatstat.geom (ever) supports the class 'vectorlist'.

Listing 30.8: Workaround: without derived class 'vectorlist' (Listing 30.6) 
spatstat.data::Kovesi$values |>
  groupedHyperframe:::t.vectorlist() |>
  identical(y = Kovesi_v_t) |>
  stopifnot()