On the example code:

 x <- rbind(c(rep(0,15),rep(1,5)),c(rep(0,15),rep(1,5)),c(rep(0,19),1),c(rep(1,5),rep(0,15)))
rownames(x) <- letters[1:4]
 d <- distGPS(x,metric='tanimoto')
 

If I have non 0 or 1 values in the matrix, distGPS gives error message. Why do we have this restriction?

> sessionInfo()
R version 3.3.3 (2017-03-06)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: openSUSE 13.1 (Bottle) (x86_64)

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8          LC_NUMERIC=C
 [3] LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8           LC_COLLATE=en_GB.UTF-8
 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_GB.UTF-8       LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8
 [7] LC_PAPER=en_GB.UTF-8          LC_NAME=en_GB.UTF-8
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=en_GB.UTF-8        LC_TELEPHONE=en_GB.UTF-8
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_GB.UTF-8    LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_GB.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] parallel  stats4    stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets
[8] methods   base

other attached packages:
 [1] cluster_2.0.6        chroGPS_1.22.0       changepoint_2.2.2
 [4] zoo_1.8-1            Biobase_2.34.0       GenomicRanges_1.26.4
 [7] GenomeInfoDb_1.10.3  IRanges_2.8.2        S4Vectors_0.12.2
[10] BiocGenerics_0.20.0  BiocInstaller_1.24.0 MASS_7.3-49
[13] smacof_1.9-6         plotrix_3.7          xlsx_0.5.7
[16] xlsxjars_0.6.1       rJava_0.9-9          rpart_4.1-13
[19] survivalsvm_0.0.5    survival_2.41-3      e1071_1.6-8

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] splines_3.3.3       ellipse_0.4.1       gtools_3.5.0
 [4] ICSNP_1.1-0         Formula_1.2-2       latticeExtra_0.6-28
 [7] slam_0.1-40         backports_1.1.2     lattice_0.20-35
[10] quantreg_5.35       quadprog_1.5-5      heplots_1.3-4
[13] digest_0.6.15       XVector_0.14.1      RColorBrewer_1.1-2
[16] checkmate_1.8.5     minqa_1.2.4         colorspace_1.3-2
[19] survey_3.33         htmltools_0.3.6     Matrix_1.2-12
[22] plyr_1.8.4          weights_0.85        SparseM_1.77
[25] zlibbioc_1.20.0     mvtnorm_1.0-7       scales_0.5.0
[28] gdata_2.18.0        DPpackage_1.1-7.4   lme4_1.1-15
[31] pracma_2.1.4        MatrixModels_0.4-1  htmlTable_1.11.2
[34] tibble_1.4.2        mgcv_1.8-23         car_2.1-6
[37] ggplot2_2.2.1       nnet_7.3-12         lazyeval_0.2.1
[40] pbkrtest_0.4-7      magrittr_1.5        mice_2.46.0
[43] nlme_3.1-131.1      foreign_0.8-69      class_7.3-14
[46] tools_3.3.3         data.table_1.10.4-3 stringr_1.3.0
[49] munsell_0.4.3       rlang_0.2.0         RCurl_1.95-4.10
[52] candisc_0.8-0       grid_3.3.3          nloptr_1.0.4
[55] htmlwidgets_1.0     bitops_1.0-6        base64enc_0.1-3
[58] gtable_0.2.0        polynom_1.3-9       gridExtra_2.3
[61] nnls_1.4            knitr_1.20          Hmisc_4.1-1
[64] stringi_1.1.6       Rcpp_0.12.15        ICS_1.3-1
[67] acepack_1.4.1       wordcloud_2.5

Hi,

Not sure if I totally understand your question, your provided example seems to be working fine on my side, please have a look at the code output and my sessionInfo().

If the question is related on why the 0/1 restriction, have in mind that as stated in the documentation, the matrix and data.frame methods for this function are designed to compute pairwise distances between binary vectors (i.e. Genes x Epigenetic marks or Patients x Drug responses, etc). However, you can still compute a distance matrix using your favorite function and distance and generate a distGPS object with it to use explore it with downstream chroGPS functions.

Best regards,

O.

> x <- rbind(c(rep(0,15),rep(1,5)),c(rep(0,15),rep(1,5)),c(rep(0,19),1),c(rep(1,5),rep(0,15)))
> rownames(x) <- letters[1:4]
> x
  [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6] [,7] [,8] [,9] [,10] [,11] [,12] [,13] [,14] [,15] [,16] [,17] [,18] [,19] [,20]
a    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0     0     0     0     0     0     0     1     1     1     1     1
b    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0     0     0     0     0     0     0     1     1     1     1     1
c    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0     1
d    1    1    1    1    1    0    0    0    0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0
> d <- distGPS(x,metric='tanimoto')
> d
Object of class distGPS with tanimoto distances between 4 objects 
> as.matrix(d)
    a   b   c d
a 0.0 0.0 0.8 1
b 0.0 0.0 0.8 1
c 0.8 0.8 0.0 1
d 1.0 1.0 1.0 0
> sessionInfo()
R version 3.4.2 (2017-09-28)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit)
Running under: OS X El Capitan 10.11.6

Matrix products: default
BLAS: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.4/Resources/lib/libRblas.0.dylib
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.4/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] parallel  stats4    stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
 [1] chroGPS_1.27.3       changepoint_2.2.2    zoo_1.8-0            MASS_7.3-47          Biobase_2.38.0       GenomicRanges_1.30.0 GenomeInfoDb_1.14.0  IRanges_2.12.0       S4Vectors_0.16.0    
[10] BiocGenerics_0.24.0 

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] survey_3.32-1           cluster_2.0.6           XVector_0.18.0          ICS_1.3-0               splines_3.4.2           zlibbioc_1.24.0         lattice_0.20-35         tools_3.4.2            
 [9] grid_3.4.2              nlme_3.1-131            ICSNP_1.1-0             survival_2.41-3         Matrix_1.2-12           GenomeInfoDbData_0.99.1 bitops_1.0-6            RCurl_1.95-4.8         
[17] compiler_3.4.2          DPpackage_1.1-7.2       mvtnorm_1.0-6