Fix compact_list() for labelled + other vctrs classes

[bwiernik]

Closes https://github.com/easystats/performance/issues/727

[strengejacke]

Thanks, however, there are a few failing tests related to this PR:

══ Failed tests ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
── Failure ('test-compact-list.R:4:3'): compact_list works as expected ─────────
compact_list(list(NULL, 1, list(NULL, NULL))) (`actual`) not equal to list(1) (`expected`).

`actual` is length 2
`expected` is length 1

`actual[[2]]` is a list
`expected[[2]]` is absent
── Failure ('test-is-empty-object.R:10:3'): is_empty_object works as expected ──
is_empty_object(list(NULL, list(NULL, NULL))) is not TRUE

`actual`:   FALSE
`expected`: TRUE 

[ FAIL 2 | WARN 0 | SKIP 26 | PASS 3335 ]
Error: Error: Test failures
Execution halted

[bwiernik]

Yeah saw that -- was doing this on a plane and didn't have a chance to investigate the tests before landing

[strengejacke]

That's why I don't like tidyverse... breaks standard R code in so many instances, and people are not aware it's a tidyverse problem.

[bwiernik]

It's mostly just vctrs that does that because of the strong typing

[strengejacke]

I think the easiest thing is just to remove the vctrs-attributes before running the function: https://github.com/easystats/insight/pull/879/commits/45499b100ee6438a31cb15dbe20eb358bcca83a3

[bwiernik]

@strengejacke I'm worried that that will have unforseen consequences. We should adjust the i == "NULL" check so that the attributes aren't removed from the returned object.

Why exactly are we comparing against the character value "NULL"? Is it just so that lists of all NULLs return true? (ala any(list(NULL, NULL) == "NULL")). If so, lets' do this instead:

any(sapply(i, is.null), na.rm = TRUE)

If we do need to retain the comparison against character "NULL" for another reason, let's do one of these:

as.character(i) == "NULL"

or: i %==% "NULL", defined as:

`%==%` <- function(e1, e2) {
  e1[] <- sapply(e1, \(x) {class(x) <- setdiff(class(x), c("haven_labelled", "vctrs_vctr")); return(x)})
  e2[] <- sapply(e2, \(x) {class(x) <- setdiff(class(x), c("haven_labelled", "vctrs_vctr")); return(x)})
  `==`(e1, e2)
}

[strengejacke]

I'm not sure which exact situation is caught, I remember we had to do this. Probably when deparse(NULL) is part of the list?

[strengejacke]

Seems like we had similar tries, but reverted: https://github.com/easystats/insight/commit/fc723c88e130359fb7fabc08fd38d92fd51049c2

[strengejacke]

Difficult to track, it was even discussed when the functions were in datawizard: https://github.com/easystats/datawizard/pull/52#issuecomment-1020312115

[bwiernik]

Okay, in that case, let's keep the check against character "NULL" and head off the the vctrs type-checking by using is.character(i) && i == "NULL" (which is probably what vctrs would want us to do in this situation anyways).

[bwiernik]

(I am not in principle opposed to vctrs' strictness around type comparisons; it is better practice than relying on implicit coercion. I agree with tidyverse team that R's ubiquitous type coercion causes more problems than it solves. But I wish that the error messages were more helpful at diagnosing that is the issue.)

[strengejacke]

When you look at the commit history of that file, you'll see that we had similar attempts in the past: https://github.com/easystats/insight/commit/8de4c03d5146c01a7b4622fa5ebe0b48224a2413#diff-39fae9f4745e94f659659b4534624f2d8158af635060c681ec48ec56b9bdf4d8R10

Not sure why we ended up with the current solution

[strengejacke]

Neither your approach nor mine work correctly. See this result, either for this PR, or #881:

out <- lapply(
  mtcars[, 1:3, drop = FALSE],
  bayestestR::ci,
  ci = c(0.9, 0.8),
  verbose = FALSE
)
insight::compact_list(out)
#> named list()

Expected result

out <- lapply(
  mtcars[, 1:3, drop = FALSE],
  bayestestR::ci,
  ci = c(0.9, 0.8),
  verbose = FALSE
)
insight::compact_list(out)
#> $mpg
#> Equal-Tailed Interval
#> 
#> 90% ETI        |        80% ETI
#> -------------------------------
#> [12.00, 31.30] | [14.34, 30.09]
#> 
#> $cyl
#> Equal-Tailed Interval
#> 
#> 90% ETI      |      80% ETI
#> ---------------------------
#> [4.00, 8.00] | [4.00, 8.00]
#> 
#> $disp
#> Equal-Tailed Interval
#> 
#> 90% ETI         |         80% ETI
#> ---------------------------------
#> [77.35, 449.00] | [80.61, 396.00]