A random example of a trivial helper function: %*% doesn't accept data.frames (only matrices), yet we often wish to matrix multiply data.frames, so these let us use %*% but on data.frames:
mm <- function(x, y) {
if(!"matrix" %in% class(x)) { x <- as.matrix(x) }
if(!"matrix" %in% class(x)) { x <- as.matrix(y) }
out <- .Primitive("%*%")(x, y)
# out <- as.data.frame(out) # if data.frame output is desired
out
}
# Example usage
x <- data.frame(a=c(1,2,3), b=c(5,6,7))
y <- c(2,2)
mm(x, y)
# [,1]
# [1,] 12
# [2,] 16
# [3,] 20
Or as an infix:
'%mm%' <- function(x, y) {
if(!"matrix" %in% class(x)) { x <- as.matrix(x) }
if(!"matrix" %in% class(x)) { x <- as.matrix(y) }
out <- .Primitive("%*%")(x, y)
# out <- as.data.frame(out) # if data.frame output is desired
out
}
x %mm% y
# [,1]
# [1,] 12
# [2,] 16
# [3,] 20
Is it ever worth putting forward similarly trivial functions for consideration for inclusion in a library (the above potentially for dplyr, since it aides math with data.frames, but this is only an example: other functions could do totally different things and belong in other packages).
My guess for the above example is probably not, based on i) how useful it is (not hugely), ii) how many people would use it (not a huge number), and iii) the advantage of keeping libraries no more bloated than they must be, meaning trivial functions should be omitted.
In any case, I would be very interested to learn from others and their policies / views / ideas around how significant a function should be before making a suggestion.
I am also eager to find out what others do to solve this for themselves - when you make something useful (even if trivial) - do you store it somewhere for the future use by yourself and/or others, suggest it in a github issue, send an email to a package maintainer, or simply not store it (or something else) ?