    CHANGES IN ff VERSION 4.0.2

BUG FIXES

    o now DESCRIPTION URL points to github



		CHANGES IN ff VERSION 4.0.1

BUG FIXES
 
    o ffindexget no longer allocates batchsizes lager than vector length
      (realized via fixes to bbatch() in package 'bit')


		CHANGES IN ff VERSION 4.0.0

BUG FIXES
 
    o all calls to data.frame now use 'stringsAsFactors = TRUE' in order to cope with the new defaults in R-4.0.0



		CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.16

USER VISIBLE CHANGES

    o    license has been extendend from GPL-2 to GPL-2 | GPL-3
    o    since template ffdfs now can be created with zero rows,
         read.table.ffdf and wrappers simply append to the template
         (and no longer treat templates with onw row different)
    o    parameter 'drop' for ff_array now behaves more like in standard R arrays
    o    new fftempdir handling (suggested by William Dunlap)
    o    .onLoad no longer sets an undefined options("fftempdir") to tempdir() 
         but to standardPathFile(file.path(tempdir(), "ff")), hence by default 
         .onUnload will not unlink tempdir() but will unlink
         standardPathFile(file.path(tempdir(), "ff"))
    o    .onLoad will create the fftempdir if it does not exists,
         but only if dirname(fftempdir) exists, if it does not exists
         it will consider fftempdir undefined (see above)
    o    .onLoad sets a new options("fftempkeep") 
         to TRUE if the fftempdir already existed 
         and to FALSE if it was created by .onLoad
    o    .onUnload will unlink fftempdir only if options("fftempkeep")==FALSE
         hence you can during a session can decide to keep a user-defined 
         fftempdir (won't work across R sessions if it was a subdiretory of 
         tempdir() because this is unlinked anyhow at terminating R).
    o    furthermore .onUnload will now only set options("fftempdir") to NULL
         if it was equal to standardPathFile(file.path(tempdir(), "ff"))
         and hence preserve any (other) value that was set before .onLoad
    o    clone.default() and clone.list() are no longer exported from ff
         (covered by clone.default in package bit)
         
MAINTENANCE
         
    o    ff has been changed for R_useDynamicSymbols(dll, FALSE)

BUG FIXES

    o   read.table.ffdf and wrappers now can handle Coltype "ordered" from template
    o   getset.ff and readwrite.ff now return the proper vmode
    o   getset.ff and readwrite.ff now repects add=TRUE
    o   getset.ff and readwrite.ff with add=TRUE  now longer returns values above the vmode domain
    o   reducing the length of ff-objects with packed vmodes 
        (boolean, logical, quad, nibble, byte, ubyte, short, ushort)
        will now fill non-used parts of the file such that
        subsequent enlarging the length of the ff-object will
        all be initialized with the same value 
        (note that the filling depends on the presence of a names attribtute,
        with names filling uses .vNA, without names filling uses 0)
    o   .onUnload no longer fails when fftempkeep=NULL 
    

    
		CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.15

USER VISIBLE CHANGES

    o   S3 methods are no longer exported
    o   The generics maxindex() and poslength() have been moved to package bit,
	also their methods for 'bit', 'bitwhich', 'ri' and their default methods.
    o   chunk.bit has been removed.
    o   ff vectors can now have length=0 (and filesize=0) (with the help of Martijn Schuemje)
    o   ff() now has default length=0 and default vmode=logical (wish of Martijn Schuemje)
    o   ffdf data.frames can now have nrow=0 (and filesizes=0)
    o   get.ff and set.ff no longer throw an error for zero-length index
    o   get.ff (and [[.ff) now return the appropriate vmode
    o   read.table.ffdf and its wrappers no longer overwrite one-row-templates 
        in argument 'x' (since now zero-row-templates are possible)
	

BUG FIXES
    o   maxlength of ff with vmodes having .ffbytes < 1 now are multiples of 1/.ffbytes
    o   default pattern with given filename is now file.path(filename)$path, "ff") instead of the path alone
    o   [[.ff now calls get.ff and no longer set..ff (reported by me :-)
	
    

		CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.14

USER VISIBLE CHANGES

    o   The $x component in hybrid indices now has class 'rlepack'.
	If you have stored hi's of older versions you can convert them by
	i <- as.hi(i)
	
	
BUG FIXES

    o   ram2ramcode() no longer gives wrong warnings 
        (reported by Fabian Werner)

    

        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.13

USER VISIBLE CHANGES

    o    clone.default no longer switches to clone.ff if dot-arguments are used.

MAINTENANCE

    o    clone(), clone.default() and clone.list() were moved to package bit
    o    clone(), clone.default() and clone.list() are also exported from ff
        (wish of CRAN maintainers)
    o    several compiler warnings have been removed

BUG FIXES

    o   On opening an ff vector the C-code now properly assignes the 'readonly'
        value to fresh memory. Changing the readonly status of an ff *could* 
        have unwanted side effects in R <= 3.0.2 and definitely *would* have 
        for R >= 3.1.0. Big thanks to Luke Tierney for spotting this!
    o    the C-code of the shellsorts at loop termination no longer reads at 
        incs[SHELLARRAYSIZE] (UBSAN)

    

        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.12

USER VISIBLE CHANGES

    o    new function file.move used instead of file.rename in order to 
        allow moving files across filesystem boundaries
    o    filename<-.ff now copies and deletes if file.rename cannot move 
        across filesystem boundaries (suggested by Milan Bouchet-Valat)

    
    
        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.11

        
USER VISIBLE CHANGES

    o    Methods 'open.ff' and 'open.ffdf' gain a new parameter 'assert' by which 'open' can be used to assert openness. 
    
    
BUG FIXES

    o   ff no longer segfaults when using closed ff objects, e.g. if an integer ff index was used and index or object was closed (reported by Jan Wijffels)
    o    ffdf[DuplicatedRows,] works now (reported by Debabrata Midya)

            

        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.10

        
BUG FIXES

    o   .Call("R_bit_as_hi") now again addresses package="bit" as it 
        should be (reported by Martijn Tennekes)

            

        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.9

        
USER VISIBLE CHANGES

    o    Functions 'ramsort', 'ramorder', 'is.sorted' and 'na.count' are now generic 
        in package 'bit'.

    
BUG FIXES

    o    in ffdf argument 'ff_join' now also allows naming columns by name as documented (reported by Suharto Anggono)


    
        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.8

        
BUG FIXES

    o    read.table.ffdf no longer overwrites the comment.char explicitely given
        and finally sets comment.char="" if it was not given (now as documented, 
        reported by Julin Maloof)
    o    ffsort no longer stops when sorting an fffactor with keysort
    o    fforder no longer creates NA when ordering an fffactor (reported by Jan Wijffels)
    o    .Call("R_bit_as_hi") now correctly addresses package="ff"
    


        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.7

        
BUG FIXES

    o    Fixed memory allocation error in keysort

    
    
        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.6

        
MAINTENANCE

    o    Removed .Internal calls to as.vector

    
BUG FIXES

    o    fixed a bug in insertion sort for integers that could have affected function ramsort

    
    
        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.5
        
        
MAINTENANCE

    o    Removed assignInNamespace("[.AsIs" ... since no longer neccessary and 
        just causing CHECK warnings

    

    
        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.4
        

BUG FIXES

    o    ff again compiles on NEtBSD (reported by Thomas Vaughan)
    o    as.integer.hi() now correctly returns integer() for an empty subscript (reported by Ivan Zhang)
    o    ffsave now respects argument 'envir'
    o    ffsave now generates as default for rootpath the root of the drive on which the ff data is (not the current drive)
    o    ffload no longer tries to create the archive directory if not existing
    o    ffload no longer tries to create the directory of the stored rootpath if different from the new rootpath (wish of Ivan Zhang)
      (let us know if this creates problems with case spelling of the old rootpath)

    
    

        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.2



USER VISIBLE CHANGES

    o    In read.table.ffdf arguments 'colClasses' and 'col.names' are now 
        enforced also during 'next.rows' chunks. If they are not provided
        by the user, they are derived now BEFORE argument 'transFUN' is 
        applied. This allows dropping columns in transFUN - and still
        having all columns info ready for next chunk's call.

    o    all calls to 'seq.int' have been replaced by 'seq_along' or 'seq_len'

    o    most calls to 'cat' have been replaced by 'message' or 'packageStartupMessage'

    
BUG FIXES

    o    fforder no longer creates an integer overflow (thanks to Edwin de Jonge)



        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.2.0


NEW FEATURES

    o    ff now supports the 64 bit Windows and Sun versions of R 
        (thanks to Brian Ripley)
    o    ff now supports sorting and ordering of ff vectors and dataframes
        (see ramsort, ffsort, ffdfsort, ramorder, fforder, ffdforder)
    o    ff now supports ff vectors as subscripts of ff objects
        (currently positive integers only, booleans are planned)
    o    New option 'ffmaxbytes' which allows certain ff procedures like sorting
        using larger limit of RAM than 'ffbatchbytes' in chunked processing.
        Such higher limit is useful for (single-R-process) sorting compared to
        some multi-R-process chunked processing. It is a good idea to reduce 
        'ffmaxbytes' on slaves or avoid ff sorting there completely.
    o    New generic 'pagesize' with method 'pagesize.ff' which returns the 
        current pagesize as defined on opening the ff object.


USER VISIBLE CHANGES

    o    [.ff now returns with the same vmode as the ff-object
    o    Certain operations are faster now because we worked around 
        unnecessary copying triggered by many of R's assignment functions.
        For example reading a factor from a (well-cached) file is now 20%
        faster and thus as fast as just creating this factor in-RAM using 
        levels()<- and class()<- assignments. 
        (consider this tuning temporary, hoping for a generic fix in base R)
    o    ff() can now open files larger than .Machine$integer.max elements
        (but gives access only to the first .Machine$integer.max elements)
    o    ff now has default pattern NULL translating to the pattern in 'filename'
        (and only to the previous default 'ff' if no filename is given)
    o    ff now sets the pattern in synch with a requested 'filename'
    o    clone.ff now always creates a file consistent with the previous pattern
    o    clone.ff now always creates a finalizer consistent with the file location
    o    clone.ffdf has a new argument 'nrow' which allows to create an empty copy 
        with a different number of rows (currently requires 'initdata=NULL')
    o    clone.default now deep-copies lists and atomic vectors
        
    
DEPRECATED

    o    virtual window support is deprecated. Let us know if you urgently need this and why.
   

BUG FIXES

    o    read.table.ffdf now also works if transFUN filters and returns less rows


BUG FIXES at 2.1.4

    o    [<-.ffdf no longer does calculate the number of elements in an ffdf
        which could led to an integer overflow


BUG FIXES at 2.1.3


    o    ffsafe now always closes ffdf objects - also partially closed ones

    o    ffsafe no longer passes arguments 'add' and 'move' to 'save'

    o    ffsafe and friends now work around the fact that under windows getwd()
        can report the same path in upper and lower case versions. 




        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.1.2


NEW FEATURES

    o    New functions ffsave, ffsave.image, ffinfo and ffload allow to save 
    and load ff and ffdf objects together with all associated ff files 
    in a ff archive. Incremental save and selective load are supported.

    o    read.table.ffdf now supports reading fixed-width format by specifying
    FUN="read.fwf". But beware, read.fwf reads fwf, writes csv, then calls 
    read.table to read csv (Anyone feels challenged to provide faster 
    csv and fwf reader?)

    o    read.table.ffdf will now treat an argument 'x' with 1 row special: 
    instead of appending it will overwrite the first row. This is working 
    around the fact that it is currently not possible to create ff vectors 
    having length zero and ffdf data.frames with zero rows.

    o    read.table.ffdf and write.table.ffdf have a new argument 'transFUN' 
    which allows filtering and other modifications on-the-fly of the 
    data.frames processed in each chunk.

    o    argument 'ff_args' in read.table.ffdf has been renamed to 'asffdf_args'

    o    New 'chunk' methods for classes 'bit' and 'ff_vector'



USER VISIBLE CHANGES

    o    The filename of each ff object is now always stored with absolute path
    and assignments to pattern<- "./foo" will now expand "." to getwd()

    o    as.ffdf.data.frame now passes '...' to ffdf like the other as.ffdf 
    methods do. From now on use 'col_args' for passing arguments to ff
    (first ff columns are created, then ffdf is called to bind them).

    o    New argument 'RECORDBYTES' for chunk methods. Position of dots argument
    moved to last position.

    o    The low-level access-functions 'get.ff', 'set.ff' and 'getset.ff' now 
    accept vectors (not only scalars) of positive subscript positions. This
    allows to evaluate the benefit of the hybrid index preprocessing done in
    '[.ff', '[<-.ff' and 'swap.ff'.


BUG FIXES

    o    Fixed problems with negative subscripts (discovered by Trishank 
    Kuppusamy):  [.ff_array and [<-.ff_array no longer skip over -1 in a 
    non-packed negative index, and hybrid indexing no longer reverts the 
    order of assigned or returned values (for negative subscripts we now 
    always set hi$ix=NULL and hi$re=FALSE).

    o    as.hi.ri no longer blows RAM by expanding the sequence ri[[1]]:ri[[2]]

    o    [.ffdf now requires less RAM because it avoids as.data.frame

    o    as.hi.which now call as.hi.integer and works

    o    chunk.default no longer uses seq.int or seq because these were buggy

    o    now also compiles under latest max os snow leopard

    o    default for options("ffbatchbytes") is now 1% of RAM under windows and 
    16MB on other OSes (was much too small on other)




        CHANGES IN ff VERSION 2.1.0


NEW LICENCING

    o    Dual licencing has been removed, all ff functionality is now 
    available under GPL-2 (and some under the ISC license version 
    of free BSD)


NEW FEATURES

    o    New packed vmodes 'boolean', 'quad', 'nibble', 'byte', 'ubyte', 
    'short', 'ushort' and 'single' allow efficient storage of integer or 
    factor data.

    o    New class 'ffdf' supports data.frame structure with several 
    options for physical storage of virtual columns.

    o    New functions 'read.table.ffdf' and 'write.table.ffdf' for reading/ 
    writing csv files into/from ffdf objects.

    o    Improved handling of files and finalizers (see user visible changes).

    o    New generic function 'chunk' from package 'bit' with a first method 
    'chunk.ffdf' that supports automated chunking suitable for parallel 
    processing.

    o    New subscript types from package 'bit' are supported: 'bit', 
    'bitwhich' and 'ri' for chunked processing.
    
    o    New coercing functions between 'ff' and 'bit': as.ff.bit, as.bit.ff
    as.hi.bit, as.bit.hi, as.hi.bitwhich, as.bitwhich.hi, as.hi.ri.

    o    The generics 'maxindex' and 'poslength' now also have methods 
    for classes 'bit', 'bitwhich' and 'ri' from package 'bit', 
    implemented via bit's corresponding generics 'length' and 'sum'
    
    o    Function 'ff' has a new parameter 'update'=TRUE that can be used 
    to create ff objects like 'initdata' without actually filling 
    it with initdata (used by ffdf)
    
    o    In function 'update' parameter 'delete' now accepts a tri-bool: 
    update(delete=NA) will do fast update by file exchange without 
    deleting the source file.


USER VISIBLE CHANGES

    o    Package 'ff' now depends on package 'bit' (1.1.1 or higher), 
    which offers many functions useful for subsetting 'ff' (see there).

    o    Functions 'bbatch', 'repfromto' and 'repfromto<-' have been 
    moved to file 'chunkutil.R' in package 'bit' where they 
    support the  new generic function 'chunk'. See also utility function 
    'vecseq' which allows to generate concatenated  multiple sequences and 
    return them as a call.

    o    ff files created via "pattern" (without giving an explicit filename) 
    now have by default extension 'ff' which can be changed via 
    options("ffextension"). The old behaviour without extension can be
    restored by setting options(ffextension=NULL) AFTER loading package ff.

    o    If an option("fffinalizer") is defined, ff(finalizer=NULL) now takes 
    it from there. If not defined, ff() behaves as before: if the file 
    location equals option("fftempdir") it chooses 'delete', otherwise 
    it chooses 'close'.

    o    ff args 'pattern' and 'filename' allow more detailed control 
    where to create ff files. 'pattern' now also accepts a rootname
    with a path. 'filename' now can be given in three forms: with an 
    explicit path to create there, with a preceding "./" to create in 
    getwd() and without path to create in getOption("fftempdir"). 

    o    New assignment generic 'filename<-' renames/moves the underlying file 
    AND changes the finalizer if the location is changed in or out of 
    fftempdir. New assignment generic 'pattern<-' does similar renaming by 
    giving a pattern and also has a method that renames/moves all files of 
    a ffdf dataframe.

    o    The finalizer logic has been changed. The finalizer function (which 
    name is stored in the ff object) is now attached at finalize-time
    (not at create-time) by attaching a single 'finalize' function at 
    create-time (for details see ?finalize). As a benefit we can access and
    change the finalizer through new functions 'finalizer' and 
    'finalizer<-'. Finalizers are now expected to set the finalizer name to
    NULL and the 'open' method makes use of this information: 'open' will 
    activate a 'close' finalizer, but only if there was no finalizer 
    activated. Finalized ff objects will have no memory about which 
    finalizer they had, and 'clone' of a finalized ff will no longer copy 
    the finalizer. 

    o    'length<-.ff' will now change the length of the existing ff
    file. For increased ff size it no longer needs to copy contents
    and will no longer guarantee to fill the new elements with NA, 
    see the help page. For decreased ff size it will physically reduce 
    the filesize. These operations carried out by file.resize are extremely
    fast and save disk space. 

    o    'dim<-.ff' will now allow changing the fastest rotating dimension
    and automatically adjust the length (dimorder retained, 
    dimnames removed).

    o    The default in all ff access functions has been changed from 
    pack=TRUE to pack=FALSE. Packing an evaluated index is only 
    efficient if the index is re-used.
    ('hi' and 'as.hi' still have default pack=TRUE)

    o    '[.ff_array' used with one subscript like in ff[i] will now return the 
    elements of the array taken from their virtual positions (more 
    compatible with R standard behaviour. If you want to access elements in 
    their physical order, you can remove the 'dim' attribute by 
    'dim(ff) <- NULL' and then use ff[i].

    o    'as.hi' and 'hiparse' now take an argument 'envir' rather than 
    'parents' to specify in which frame to evaluate

    o    Assigning NA of length 1 to a signed ff factor no longer gives 
    a warning (ram2ffcode no longer warns here)

    o    "levels<-.ff" now warns if the number of levels was reduced, but no 
    longer if it was increased


BUG FIXES

    o    'bbatch' now balances better

    o    'vw<-.ff_array' no longer complains about a wrong value 
    when vw had been set before

    o    'maxffmode' now also returns only one .ffmode if a single vmode was 
    passed in

    o    '[.ff' and friends now also find their (unevaluated) index arguments 
    if the call was inherited via 'NextMethod'

    o    '[.AsIs' now returns a class based on the class AFTER subscripting
    not the the class of the un-subscripted object (BUG in R Base)

    o    'update.ff' now handles factors correctly

    o    Closing and re-opening ff files will no longer trigger attempts to 
    delete ff files with a 'delete' finalizer multiple times


KNOWN PROBLEMS / TODOs

    o    bootstrapping rows from matrix with dimorder=c(2,1) is (under Win32) 
    not faster than bootstrapping rows from a ffdf build physically on 
    top of vectors: the fs-cache has problems handling larger matrix
    compared to smaller vectors. Therefore we consider partitioning of 
    ff objects in a future release.

    o    ff objects can be nicely used in multi-core processing, however be 
    aware that there is yet no locking mechanism against concurrent writes
    (often locking is not needed).

    o    NAs are mapped to TRUE in 'bit' and to FALSE in 'ff' booleans. Might be aligned 
    in a future release. Don't use bit or ff booleans if you have NAs 
    - or map NAs explicitely.
