Documentation on "correct" way of handling NA in list_of

[bart1]

I was investigating the implementation of a list_of vector. For that I studies the poly example. I was interested in understanding how NA values should be handled. I tried two different ways of creating a vector with NA (see below) and they ended with different lists. Once with a NULL element and once with a NA_integer_, this results in quite different behavior both for printing and detecting NA's. From the behaviour it seems the NULL version is more like I would expect. However then this should be probably printing NA or missing. This might not really be an issue with the package code but more profit form the best practice being included in the documentation.

require(vctrs)
#> Loading required package: vctrs
poly <- function(...) {
  x <- vec_cast_common(..., .to = integer())
  new_poly(x)
}
new_poly <- function(x) {
  new_list_of(x, ptype = integer(), class = "vctrs_poly_list")
}

format.vctrs_poly_list <- function(x, ...) {
  format_one <- function(x) {
    if (length(x) == 0) {
      return("")
    }
    
    if (length(x) == 1) {
      format(x)
    } else {
      suffix <- c(paste0("\u22C5x^", seq(length(x) - 1, 1)), "")
      out <- paste0(x, suffix)
      out <- out[x != 0L]
      paste0(out, collapse = " + ")
    }
  }
  
  vapply(x, format_one, character(1))
}

obj_print_data.vctrs_poly_list <- function(x, ...) {
  if (length(x) != 0) {
    print(format(x), quote = FALSE)
  }
}

p <- poly(1, NA, c(1, 0, 1))
pp <- c(poly(2:1), NA, poly(1))
str(p)
#> vctrs_p_ [1:3] 
#> $ : int 1
#> $ : int NA
#> $ : int [1:3] 1 0 1
#> @ ptype: int(0)
str(pp)
#> vctrs_p_ [1:3] 
#> $ : int [1:2] 2 1
#> $ : NULL
#> $ : int 1
#> @ ptype: int(0)
p
#> <vctrs_poly_list[3]>
#> [1] 1         NA        1⋅x^2 + 1
pp
#> <vctrs_poly_list[3]>
#> [1] 2⋅x^1 + 1           1
is.na(p)
#> [1] FALSE FALSE FALSE
is.na(pp)
#> [1] FALSE  TRUE FALSE
vec_detect_missing(p)
#> [1] FALSE FALSE FALSE
vec_detect_missing(pp)
#> [1] FALSE  TRUE FALSE
p==p
#> [1] TRUE TRUE TRUE
pp==pp
#> [1] TRUE   NA TRUE
sessioninfo::session_info()
#> ─ Session info ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#>  setting  value
#>  version  R version 4.4.0 (2024-04-24)
#>  os       Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
#>  system   x86_64, linux-gnu
#>  ui       X11
#>  language (EN)
#>  collate  en_US.UTF-8
#>  ctype    en_US.UTF-8
#>  tz       Europe/Amsterdam
#>  date     2024-10-29
#>  pandoc   3.1.11 @ /usr/lib/rstudio/resources/app/bin/quarto/bin/tools/x86_64/ (via rmarkdown)
#> 
#> ─ Packages ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#>  package     * version date (UTC) lib source
#>  cli           3.6.3   2024-06-21 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  digest        0.6.35  2024-03-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  evaluate      0.23    2023-11-01 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  fastmap       1.2.0   2024-05-15 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  fs            1.6.4   2024-04-25 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  glue          1.8.0   2024-09-30 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
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#>  knitr         1.46    2024-04-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  lifecycle     1.0.4   2023-11-07 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
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#>  R.cache       0.16.0  2022-07-21 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  R.methodsS3   1.8.2   2022-06-13 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  R.oo          1.26.0  2024-01-24 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  R.utils       2.12.3  2023-11-18 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
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#>  sessioninfo   1.2.2   2021-12-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  styler        1.10.3  2024-04-07 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  vctrs       * 0.6.5   2023-12-01 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  withr         3.0.1   2024-07-31 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  xfun          0.43    2024-03-25 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  yaml          2.3.9   2024-07-05 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#> 
#>  [1] /home/bart/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.4
#>  [2] /usr/local/lib/R/site-library
#>  [3] /usr/lib/R/site-library
#>  [4] /usr/lib/R/library
#> 
#> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

[bart1]

I realized the format function might want to return NA_character_ for consistent formating