coalesce vectors of type list #3712

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1. mattdowle

   added

   dev

   on Jul 18, 2019
2. mattdowle

   added this to the 1.12.4 milestone on Jul 18, 2019
3. jangorecki

   self-assigned this

   on Jul 29, 2019
4. jangorecki commented on Jul 29, 2019

   

   jangorecki

   on Jul 29, 2019

   Last edited by jangorecki

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   differences reported in tweet:

   coalesce(list(1, NA), list(NA, 2))
   #  The first argument is a list, data.table or data.frame. In this case there should be no other arguments provided.

   is a result of API improvement implemented in 1f0bcc7 where x and ... has been merged into single input argument.
   We should decide if we want to keep that improvement or be consistent to hutils/dplyr, and go back to distinct input argument x and ....

   coalesce(list(c(1, NA), c(NA, 2)))
   #[1] 1 2

   there is no gain for being consistent to dplyr/hutils in this case as they do nothing, this is related to point 1 above.

   never heard about tidy dots, could anyone provide a reference to R manual? or is it tidyverse-only feature?
   AFAIU we already handle same input that dplyr requires !!!, this is related to point 1 above, where we merge x and ....

   coalesce(1:2, 1:3)
   #Error in coalesce(1:2, 1:3) : 
     Item 2 is length 3 but the first item is length 2. Only singletons are recycled.

   error, as it is now, it is definitely better, same as dplyr, unlike hutils

   coalesce(factor(NA,"a"), factor("a",c("a","b")))
   #Error in coalesce(factor(NA, "a"), factor("a", c("a", "b"))) : 
     Item 2 is a factor but its levels are not identical to the first item's levels.

   being consistent to dplyr/hutils here doesn't seem to be great, they result into NAs. Ideally would be to merge factor levels. I would say current DT behaviour is acceptable, if we want to change this we should merge levels.
5. jangorecki

   removed their assignment

   on Jul 29, 2019
6. mattdowle

   added a commit that references this issue on Sep 19, 2019

   fcoalesce of type list (#3712) link added to news item

   a5537dc
7. mattdowle

   removed

   dev

   on Sep 19, 2019
8. mattdowle

   modified the milestones: 1.12.4, 1.13.0 on Sep 19, 2019
9. mattdowle

   modified the milestones: 1.12.7, 1.12.9 on Dec 8, 2019
10. jangorecki commented on Jun 17, 2020

    

    jangorecki

    on Jun 17, 2020

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    related change coming to dplyr tidyverse/dplyr#5334
11. mattdowle

    modified the milestones: 1.13.1, 1.13.3 on Oct 17, 2020
12. mattdowle

    removed this from the 1.14.1 milestone on Aug 28, 2021
13. MichaelChirico

    added

    consistency

    on Jul 11, 2025