beware of RANK() behaviour

[<Gunter.Hartel@csl.com.au>]

Hi,

I just noted what I consider odd behaviour in the RANK() function.

The rank function is supposed to be used on vectors rather than lists. When used on lists it doesn’t complain but just returns a wrong result:

a = {5, 4, 1, 2, 3};

rank(a);

[5,4,3,2,1]

a = [5 4 1 2 3];

rank(a);

[3,4,5,2,1]

Perhaps the way the rank() function deals with lists is useful under some circumstances, but in general I prefer when functions complain when they’re given the wrong type of parameter rather than produce a non-sense result that can be hard to track down.

Cheers

Gunter

 

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