JuliaData / JuliaData/DataFramesMeta.jl

document the use of `rsubset` to preserve missings

Open
#313 3 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Julia
Stars
496
Forks
56
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Trying to subset b==0 while still preserving the missing in b

julia> dd = DataFrame(a = [1, 2, 3], b = [1, missing, 0])
3×2 DataFrame
 Row │ a      b       
     │ Int64  Int64?  
─────┼────────────────
   1 │     1        1
   2 │     2  missing 
   3 │     3        0

julia> @chain dd begin
           @rsubset :b == 0 | ismissing(:b)
       end
1×2 DataFrame
 Row │ a      b      
     │ Int64  Int64? 
─────┼───────────────
   1 │     3       0

However,

learned on slack that :b == 0 returns missing and the | propagates missing. What we instead should do is

julia> @chain dd begin
           @rsubset ismissing(:b) || :b == 0
       end

Here the order matters. We would get an error otherwise.

This is a very subtle but important manipulation that it is better to be documented.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Use the issue's @rsubset examples as the starting point and locate the existing documentation for rsubset. Document why :b == 0 propagates missing, why || is needed, and why the order matters; verify the documented examples produce the intended rows.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
julia
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.