Checkmate
Michel Lang
2017-07-02
Ever used an R function that produced a not-very-helpful error message, just to discover after minutes of debugging that you simply passed a wrong argument?
Blaming the laziness of the package author for not doing such standard checks (in a dynamically typed language such as R) is at least partially unfair, as R makes theses types of checks cumbersome and annoying. Well, that’s how it was in the past.
Enter checkmate.
Virtually every standard type of user error when passing arguments into function can be caught with a simple, readable line which produces an informative error message in case. A substantial part of the package was written in C to minimize any worries about execution time overhead.
Intro
As a motivational example, consider you have a function to calculate the faculty of a natural number and the user may choose between using either the stirling approximation or R’s factorial function (which internally uses the gamma function). Thus, you have two arguments, n and method. Argument n must obviously be a positive natural number and method must be either "stirling" or "factorial". Here is a version of all the hoops you need to jump through to ensure that these simple requirements are met:
fact <- function(n, method = "stirling") {
if (length(n) != 1)
stop("Argument 'n' must have length 1")
if (!is.numeric(n))
stop("Argument 'n' must be numeric")
if (is.na(n))
stop("Argument 'n' may not be NA")
if (is.double(n)) {
if (is.nan(n))
stop("Argument 'n' may not be NaN")
if (is.infinite(n))
stop("Argument 'n' must be finite")
if (abs(n - round(n, 0)) > sqrt(.Machine$double.eps))
stop("Argument 'n' must be an integerish value")
n <- as.integer(n)
}
if (n < 0)
stop("Argument 'n' must be >= 0")
if (length(method) != 1)
stop("Argument 'method' must have length 1")
if (!is.character(method) || !method %in% c("stirling", "factorial"))
stop("Argument 'method' must be either 'stirling' or 'factorial'")
if (method == "factorial")
factorial(n)
else
sqrt(2 * pi * n) * (n / exp(1))^n
}
And for comparison, here is the same function using checkmate:
fact <- function(n, method = "stirling") {
assertCount(n)
assertChoice(method, c("stirling", "factorial"))
if (method == "factorial")
factorial(n)
else
sqrt(2 * pi * n) * (n / exp(1))^n
}
Function overview
The functions can be split into four functional groups, indicated by their prefix.
If prefixed with assert, an error is thrown if the corresponding check fails. Otherwise, the checked object is returned invisibly. There are many different coding styles out there in the wild, but most R programmers stick to either camelBack or underscore_case. Therefore, checkmate offers all functions in both flavors: assert_count is just an alias for assertCount but allows you to retain your favorite style.
The family of functions prefixed with test always return the check result as logical value. Again, you can use test_count and testCount interchangeably.
Functions starting with check return the error message as a string (or TRUE otherwise) and can be used if you need more control and, e.g., want to grep on the returned error message.
expect is the last family of functions and is intended to be used with the testthat package. All performed checks are logged into the testthat reporter. Because testthat uses the underscore_case, the extension functions only come in the underscore style.
All functions are categorized into objects to check on the package help page.
In case you miss flexibility
You can use assert to perform multiple checks at once and throw an assertion if all checks fail.
Here is an example where we check that x is either of class foo or class bar:
f <- function(x) {
assert(
checkClass(x, "foo"),
checkClass(x, "bar")
)
}
Note that assert(, combine = "or") and assert(, combine = "and") allow to control the logical combination of the specified checks, and that the former is the default.
Argument Checks for the Lazy
The following functions allow a special syntax to define argument checks using a special format specification. E.g., qassert(x, "I+") asserts that x is an integer vector with at least one element and no missing values. This very simple domain specific language covers a large variety of frequent argument checks with only a few keystrokes. You choose what you like best.
checkmate as testthat extension
To extend testthat, you need to IMPORT, DEPEND or SUGGEST on the checkmate package. Here is a minimal example:
# file: tests/test-all.R
library(testthat)
library(checkmate) # for testthat extensions
test_check("mypkg")
Now you are all set and can use more than 30 new expectations in your tests.
test_that("checkmate is a sweet extension for testthat", {
x = runif(100)
expect_numeric(x, len = 100, any.missing = FALSE, lower = 0, upper = 1)
# or, equivalent, using the lazy style:
qexpect(x, "N100[0,1]")
})
Speed considerations
In comparison with tediously writing the checks yourself in R (c.f. factorial example at the beginning of the vignette), R is sometimes a tad faster while performing checks on scalars. This seems odd at first, because checkmate is mostly written in C and should be comparably fast. Yet many of the functions in the base package are not regular functions, but primitives. While primitives jump directly into the C code, checkmate has to use the considerably slower .Call interface. As a result, it is possible to write (very simple) checks using only the base functions which, under some circumstances, slightly outperform checkmate. However, if you go one step further and wrap the custom check into a function to convenient re-use it, the performance gain is often lost (see benchmark 1).
For larger objects the tide has turned because checkmate avoids many unnecessary intermediate variables. Also note that the quick/lazy implementation in qassert/qtest/qexpect is often a tad faster because only two arguments have to be evaluated (the object and the rule) to determine the set of checks to perform.
Below you find some (probably unrepresentative) benchmark. But also note that this one here has been executed from inside knitr which is often the cause for outliers in the measured execution time. Better run the benchmark yourself to get unbiased results.
Benchmark 1: Assert that x is a flag
library(ggplot2)
library(microbenchmark)
x = TRUE
r = function(x, na.ok = FALSE) { stopifnot(is.logical(x), length(x) == 1, na.ok || !is.na(x)) }
cm = function(x) assertFlag(x)
cmq = function(x) qassert(x, "B1")
mb = microbenchmark(r(x), cm(x), cmq(x))
print(mb)
## Unit: nanoseconds
## expr min lq mean median uq max neval cld
## r(x) 4904 5286.5 26742.55 5502.5 5807.5 2076664 100 a
## cm(x) 1352 1493.0 8785.74 1621.0 1770.0 643645 100 a
## cmq(x) 793 955.5 7491.49 1080.0 1207.0 577898 100 a
Benchmark 2: Assert that x is a numeric of length 1000 with no missing nor NaN values
x = runif(1000)
r = function(x) stopifnot(is.numeric(x) && length(x) == 1000 && all(!is.na(x) & x >= 0 & x <= 1))
cm = function(x) assertNumeric(x, len = 1000, any.missing = FALSE, lower = 0, upper = 1)
cmq = function(x) qassert(x, "N1000[0,1]")
mb = microbenchmark(r(x), cm(x), cmq(x))
print(mb)
## Unit: microseconds
## expr min lq mean median uq max neval cld
## r(x) 12.411 12.8695 40.62332 13.069 13.3395 2726.683 100 a
## cm(x) 4.115 4.3395 11.21577 4.582 4.7905 605.937 100 a
## cmq(x) 3.947 4.1365 9.70116 4.346 4.4845 537.233 100 a
Benchmark 3: Assert that x is a character vector with no missing values nor empty strings
x = sample(letters, 10000, replace = TRUE)
r = function(x) stopifnot(is.character(x) && !any(is.na(x)) && all(nchar(x) > 0))
cm = function(x) assertCharacter(x, any.missing = FALSE, min.chars = 1)
cmq = function(x) qassert(x, "S+[1,]")
mb = microbenchmark(r(x), cm(x), cmq(x))
print(mb)
## Unit: microseconds
## expr min lq mean median uq max neval
## r(x) 1179.033 1201.2760 1321.14122 1237.3555 1314.4110 3577.841 100
## cm(x) 38.971 43.9745 56.01950 45.5000 47.9295 680.959 100
## cmq(x) 39.867 42.0115 51.77969 43.1695 44.5770 766.582 100
## cld
## b
## a
## a
Benchmark 4: Assert that x is a data frame with no missing values
N = 10000
x = data.frame(a = runif(N), b = sample(letters[1:5], N, replace = TRUE), c = sample(c(FALSE, TRUE), N, replace = TRUE))
r = function(x) is.data.frame(x) && !any(sapply(x, function(x) any(is.na(x))))
cm = function(x) testDataFrame(x, any.missing = FALSE)
cmq = function(x) qtest(x, "D")
mb = microbenchmark(r(x), cm(x), cmq(x))
print(mb)
## Unit: microseconds
## expr min lq mean median uq max neval cld
## r(x) 50.424 51.0460 93.15128 52.1115 71.8255 1977.337 100 b
## cm(x) 13.808 14.2555 25.25385 14.6530 14.8825 906.913 100 a
## cmq(x) 10.145 10.2895 17.50140 10.4320 10.7130 675.201 100 a
# checkmate tries to stop as early as possible
x$a[1] = NA
mb = microbenchmark(r(x), cm(x), cmq(x))
print(mb)
## Unit: nanoseconds
## expr min lq mean median uq max neval cld
## r(x) 43821 44398.5 63352.53 45076.0 64628 1101173 100 b
## cm(x) 3008 3265.5 3790.79 3748.5 3955 14545 100 a
## cmq(x) 536 687.0 1057.58 1017.5 1179 8104 100 a
Extending checkmate
To extend checkmate a custom check* function has to be written. For example, to check for a square matrix one can re-use parts of checkmate and extend the check with additional functionality:
checkSquareMatrix = function(x, mode = NULL) {
# check functions must return TRUE on success
# and a custom error message otherwise
res = checkMatrix(x, mode = mode)
if (!isTRUE(res))
return(res)
if (nrow(x) != ncol(x))
return("Must be square")
return(TRUE)
}
# a quick test:
X = matrix(1:9, nrow = 3)
checkSquareMatrix(X)
## [1] TRUE
checkSquareMatrix(X, mode = "character")
## [1] "Must store characters"
checkSquareMatrix(X[1:2, ])
## [1] "Must be square"
The respective counterparts to the check-function can be created using the constructors makeAssertionFunction, makeTestFunction and makeExpectationFunction:
# For assertions:
assert_square_matrix = assertSquareMatrix = makeAssertionFunction(checkSquareMatrix)
print(assertSquareMatrix)
## function (x, mode = NULL, .var.name = vname(x), add = NULL)
## {
## res = checkSquareMatrix(x, mode)
## makeAssertion(x, res, .var.name, add)
## }
# For tests:
test_square_matrix = testSquareMatrix = makeTestFunction(checkSquareMatrix)
print(testSquareMatrix)
## function (x, mode = NULL)
## {
## identical(checkSquareMatrix(x, mode), TRUE)
## }
# For expectations:
expect_square_matrix = makeExpectationFunction(checkSquareMatrix)
print(expect_square_matrix)
## function (x, mode = NULL, info = NULL, label = vname(x))
## {
## res = checkSquareMatrix(x, mode)
## makeExpectation(x, res, info, label)
## }
Note that all the additional arguments .var.name, add, info and label are automatically joined with the function arguments of your custom check function. Also note that if you define these functions inside an R package, the constructors are called at build-time (thus, there is no negative impact on the runtime).
Calling checkmate from C/C++
The package registers two functions which can be used in other packages’ C/C++ code for argument checks.
SEXP qassert(SEXP x, const char *rule, const char *name);
Rboolean qtest(SEXP x, const char *rule);
These are the counterparts to qassert and qtest. Due to their simplistic interface, they perfectly suit the requirements of most type checks in C/C++.
For detailed background information on the register mechanism, see the Exporting C Code section in Hadley’s Book “R Packages” or WRE. Here is a step-by-step guide to get you started:
- Add
checkmate to your “Imports” and LinkingTo" sections in your DESCRIPTION file.
- Create a stub file C source file which pulls in the provided C functions in order to compile them for your package. See example below.
- Include the provided header file
<checkmate.h> in each compilation unit where you want to use checkmate.
/* Example for (2), "checkmate_stub.c":*/
#include <checkmate.h>
#include <checkmate_stub.c>
Session Info
For the sake of completeness, here the sessionInfo() for the benchmark (but remember the note before on knitr possibly biasing the results).
## R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30)
## Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
## Running under: Arch Linux
##
## Matrix products: default
## BLAS/LAPACK: /usr/lib/libopenblas_haswellp-r0.2.19.so
##
## locale:
## [1] LC_CTYPE=de_DE.utf8 LC_NUMERIC=C
## [3] LC_TIME=de_DE.utf8 LC_COLLATE=C
## [5] LC_MONETARY=de_DE.utf8 LC_MESSAGES=de_DE.utf8
## [7] LC_PAPER=de_DE.utf8 LC_NAME=C
## [9] LC_ADDRESS=C LC_TELEPHONE=C
## [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.utf8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
##
## attached base packages:
## [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
##
## other attached packages:
## [1] microbenchmark_1.4-2.1 ggplot2_2.2.1 checkmate_1.8.3
##
## loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
## [1] Rcpp_0.12.11 knitr_1.16 magrittr_1.5 MASS_7.3-47
## [5] splines_3.4.1 munsell_0.4.3 lattice_0.20-35 colorspace_1.3-2
## [9] rlang_0.1.1.9000 multcomp_1.4-6 stringr_1.2.0 plyr_1.8.4
## [13] tools_3.4.1 grid_3.4.1 gtable_0.2.0 TH.data_1.0-8
## [17] htmltools_0.3.6 survival_2.41-3 yaml_2.1.14 lazyeval_0.2.0
## [21] rprojroot_1.2 digest_0.6.12 tibble_1.3.3 Matrix_1.2-10
## [25] codetools_0.2-15 evaluate_0.10.1 rmarkdown_1.6 sandwich_2.3-4
## [29] stringi_1.1.5 compiler_3.4.1 scales_0.4.1 backports_1.1.0
## [33] mvtnorm_1.0-6 zoo_1.8-0