Under the impulsion of @kevin_ushey who already did something similar for Rcpp, we’ve been adding subsetting behavior into Rcpp11.

The idea is given a vector y and a vector x we want to give meaning to y[x].

The first legitimate question is what kind of x do we want to allow. This has been discussed since january. So far, we’ve settled to allow x to be integer, logical and character vectors. The main source of anxiety here being the typical Cornelian Dilemma

Do we use 0-based or 1-based indices ?

We decided to use 0-based indices, as this is what we do when x is a scalar int, and this is C++ : indexing starts at 0 .

rhs use

Given that, here is a first example:

NumericVector y = sqrt( seq_len(10) ) ;  
IntegerVector x {0,1,2} ;  
NumericVector res = y[x] ;  
// [1] 1.000000 1.414214 1.732051

The way we implemented this, y[x] does not yet return a NumericVector, that would have been too easy, instead it gives us a lovely sugar expression.

NumericVector y = sqrt( seq_len(10) ) ;  
IntegerVector x {0,1,2} ;  
auto res = y[x] ;  
Rprintf( "type(res) = %s\n", DEMANGLE(decltype(res)) ) ;  
// type(res) = Rcpp::SubsetProxy<Rcpp::Vector<14, Rcpp::PreserveStorage>, int, Rcpp::Vector<13, Rcpp::PreserveStorage> >
return res ;  
// [1] 1.000000 1.414214 1.732051

This is relevant because we don’t need to materialize the data too early, we can send it to whatever sugar function:

NumericVector y = sqrt( seq_len(10) ) ;  
IntegerVector x {0,1,2} ;  
auto res = sapply( y[x], [](double x){ return x*x; }) ;  
Rprintf( "type(res) = %s\n", DEMANGLE(decltype(res)) ) ;  
// type(res) = Rcpp::sugar::Sapply<double, Rcpp::SubsetProxy<Rcpp::Vector<14, Rcpp::PreserveStorage>, int, Rcpp::Vector<13, Rcpp::PreserveStorage> >, test()::$_0>
return res ;  
// [1] 1 2 3

x may also be a sugar expression, it does not necessarily need to be a materialized vector. For example:

NumericVector y = sqrt( seq_len(10) ) ;  
auto res = sapply( y[seq(0, 4)], [](double x){ return x*x; }) ;  
Rprintf( "type(res) = %s\n", DEMANGLE(decltype(res)) ) ;  
// type(res) = Rcpp::sugar::Sapply<double, Rcpp::SubsetProxy<Rcpp::Vector<14, Rcpp::PreserveStorage>, int, Rcpp::sugar::Seq>, test()::$_0>
return res ;  
// [1] 1 2 3 4 5 

And it can be a logical or character expression. For example y[ y < 2.0 ] ...

lhs use

In addition to being a sugar expression, that knows how to apply itself to a vector, the object that is created by y[x] may also be used on the lhs of the expression.

For example :

NumericVector y = sqrt( seq_len(10) ) ;  
IntegerVector x {0,1,2} ;  
y[x] = - y[x] ;  
return y ;  
// [1] -1.000000 -1.414214 -1.732051  2.000000  2.236068  2.449490  2.645751
// [8]  2.828427  3.000000  3.162278

And of course, handling sugar :

NumericVector y = sqrt( seq_len(10) ) ;  
IntegerVector x {0,1,2} ;  
y[2*x] = - y[x] ;  
return y ;  
// [1] -1.000000  1.414214 -1.414214  2.000000  1.414214  2.449490  2.645751
// [8]  2.828427  3.000000  3.162278 

Although the feature has been discussed for a few months, it is pretty new so things might change. Actually I came up with a few ideas while writing this post.