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Is there any difference between testing isTRUE(all.equal(x, y)) and identical(x, y)?
The help page says:
Don't use 'all.equal' directly in 'if' expressions — either use 'isTRUE(all.equal(....))' or 'identical' if appropriate.
but that "if appropriate" leaves me in doubt. How do I decide which of the two is appropriate?
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all. equal(x, y) is a utility to compare R objects x and y testing 'near equality'. If they are different, comparison is still made to some extent, and a report of the differences is returned. Do not use all.
setequal() function in R Language is used to check if two objects are equal. This function takes two objects like Vectors, dataframes, etc. as arguments and results in TRUE or FALSE, if the Objects are equal or not.
all.equal tests for near equality, while identical is more exact (e.g. it has no tolerance for differences, and it compares storage type). From ?identical:
The function ‘all.equal’ is also sometimes used to test equality this way, but was intended for something different: it allows for small differences in numeric results.
And one reason you would wrap all.equal in isTRUE is because all.equal will report differences rather than simply return FALSE.
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