Error when performing an NA replacement in R 4.0

Question

With R 3.6 I can perform the following NA replacement

> d <- zoo(data.frame(a = NA, b = 1), Sys.Date())
> d[is.na(d)] <- 1
> d
           a b
2021-03-03 1 1

With R 4.0 I get the following error:

> d <- zoo(data.frame(a = NA, b = 1), Sys.Date())
> d[is.na(d)] <- 1
Error in as.Date.default(e) : 
  do not know how to convert 'e' to class “Date”

Has some default behavior changed in R 4.0?

R 3.6 session info:

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19041.804]
(c) 2020 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\>R --no-site-file

R version 3.6.1 (2019-07-05) -- "Action of the Toes"
Copyright (C) 2019 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)

R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
Type 'license()' or 'licence()' for distribution details.

  Natural language support but running in an English locale

R is a collaborative project with many contributors.
Type 'contributors()' for more information and
'citation()' on how to cite R or R packages in publications.

Type 'demo()' for some demos, 'help()' for on-line help, or
'help.start()' for an HTML browser interface to help.
Type 'q()' to quit R.

> library(zoo)

Attaching package: 'zoo'

The following objects are masked from 'package:base':

    as.Date, as.Date.numeric

Warning message:
package 'zoo' was built under R version 4.0.4
> d <- zoo(data.frame(a = NA, b = 1), Sys.Date())
> d[is.na(d)] <- 1
> d
           a b
2021-03-03 1 1

R 4.0 session info:

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19041.804]
(c) 2020 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\>R --no-site-file

R version 4.0.4 (2021-02-15) -- "Lost Library Book"
Copyright (C) 2021 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)

R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
Type 'license()' or 'licence()' for distribution details.

  Natural language support but running in an English locale

R is a collaborative project with many contributors.
Type 'contributors()' for more information and
'citation()' on how to cite R or R packages in publications.

Type 'demo()' for some demos, 'help()' for on-line help, or
'help.start()' for an HTML browser interface to help.
Type 'q()' to quit R.

> library(zoo)

Attaching package: 'zoo'

The following objects are masked from 'package:base':

    as.Date, as.Date.numeric

> d <- zoo(data.frame(a = NA, b = 1), Sys.Date())
> d[is.na(d)] <- 1
Error in as.Date.default(e) :
  do not know how to convert 'e' to class "Date"

Session Info (3.6):

> sessionInfo()
R version 3.6.1 (2019-07-05)
Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19041)

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252
[2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

other attached packages:
[1] zoo_1.8-8

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_3.6.1  grid_3.6.1      lattice_0.20-38

Session Info (4.0):

> sessionInfo()
R version 4.0.4 (2021-02-15)
Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19041)

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252
[2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

other attached packages:
[1] zoo_1.8-8

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_4.0.4  tools_4.0.4     grid_4.0.4      lattice_0.20-41

Answer 1

Thanks for raising this issue, it was a bug in the zoo package. In the [.zoo and [<-.zoo methods we checked whether the index i was a matrix via

if (all(class(i) == "matrix")) ...

This worked correctly in R 3.x.y because matrix objects just had the class "matrix". However, in R 4.0.0 matrix objects started additionally inheriting from "array". See: https://developer.R-project.org/Blog/public/2019/11/09/when-you-think-class.-think-again/.

In the zoo development version on R-Forge (https://R-Forge.R-project.org/R/?group_id=18) I have fixed the issue now by replacing the above code with

if (inherits(i, "matrix")) ...

So you can already install zoo 1.8-9 from R-Forge and your code will work again as intended. Alternatively, you can wait for that version to arrive on CRAN which will hopefully come out in the next days after reverse dependency checks. In the mean time you can work around the issue by using

coredata(d)[is.na(d)] <- 1