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Re: Picking Off Lists That Have No Numbers

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg99516] Re: [mg99471] Picking Off Lists That Have No Numbers
• From: Leonid Shifrin <lshifr at gmail.com>
• Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 06:33:50 -0400 (EDT)
• References: <200905060925.FAA01807@smc.vnet.net>

Hi Gregory,

you should use _?NumberQ or _?NumericQ, not _Number. There
are no atomic built-in types with such head.

Regards,
Leonid


On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 2:25 AM, Gregory Lypny <gregory.lypny at videotron.ca>wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> In a previous thread, "Select and Cases Give Different Answers," I
> discussed a bug, confirmed by others on the list and which Daniel
> Lichtblau of Wolfram said has been fixed in the development kernel,
> and I wonder whether we have the same problem here.
>
> I want to know if a list has no numbers in it.  Here I get the wrong
> answer for the first list.
>
> FreeQ[#, _Number] & /@ {{"NA", 2.3, 3/8}, {"NA", "NA", "NA"}}
>
> yields {True, True}
> And same here.
>
> MemberQ[#, _Number] & /@ {{"NA", 2.3, 3/8}, {"NA", "NA", "NA"}}
>
> {False, False}
>
> If I use Real or Rational for the criterion, I get the right answers,
> but that's no good if you have some lists that are mixtures of strings
> and reals and others that are mixtures of strings and rationals.
>
> FreeQ[#, _Real] && FreeQ[#, _Rational]
> & /@ {{"NA", 2.3, 3/8}, {"NA", "NA", "NA"}, {"NA", 2.3, "NA"}, {"NA",
> 2.3, 9.4}}
>
> Now this works.
>
> Count[#, _String] == Length[#] & /@ {{"NA", 2.3, 3/8}, {"NA", "NA",
> "NA"}}
>
> {False, True}
>
> But this does not!
>
> Count[#, _Number] == 0 & /@ {{"NA", 2.3, 3/8}, {"NA", "NA", "NA"}}
>
> {True, True}
>
> I don't mean to be a pain, but it is important in my sample selection
> procedures to be able to make the distinction between strings and
> numbers, so I'd be interested in knowing whether I'm misunderstanding
> properties such as Number or Numeric (don't really know the
> difference) or this is a bug.
>
>
>        Gregory
>
>

• References:
  • Picking Off Lists That Have No Numbers
    • From: Gregory Lypny <gregory.lypny@videotron.ca>