[jira] [Created] (ARROW-9083) [R] collect int64 as R integer type if not out of bounds

["Neal Richardson (Jira)" <ji...@apache.org>]

Neal Richardson created ARROW-9083:
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             Summary: [R] collect int64 as R integer type if not out of bounds
                 Key: ARROW-9083
                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ARROW-9083
             Project: Apache Arrow
          Issue Type: Improvement
          Components: R
            Reporter: Neal Richardson


{{bit64::integer64}} can be awkward to work with in R (one example: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/7385). Often in Arrow we get {{int64}} types from [compute methods|https://github.com/apache/arrow/pull/7308] or other translation methods that auto-promote to the largest integer type, but they would fit fine in a 32-bit integer, which is R's native type. 

When calling {{Array__as_vector}} on an int64, we could first call the minmax function on the array, and if the extrema are within the range of a 32-bit int, return a regular R integer vector. This would add a little bit of ambiguity as to what R type you'll get from an Arrow type, but I wonder if the benefits are worth it since you can't do much with an integer64 in R. (We could also make this optional, similar to ARROW-7657, so you could specify a "strict" mode if you are in a use case where roundtrip fidelity is more important than R usability.)



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