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Message-ID: <p7o8701cd9ue69l3gd50jdvi9u0fei4cam@4ax.com>
Date: 2004-04-07T22:15:57Z
From: Duncan Murdoch
Subject: More user-friendly error message needed.
In-Reply-To: <k4l870p6eqfisbutc4e5a6a0it2gebufeu@4ax.com>

On Wed, 07 Apr 2004 15:38:54 -0400, Duncan Murdoch <dmurdoch@pair.com>
wrote :

>There are several places this could be fixed.  When you use x$z, the
>code for $ could give an error message or a warning; instead it
>returns NULL with no error or warning.  Changing this would probably
>be dangerous:  I'd guess there's code out there that relies on getting
>a NULL back from a construction like that.  But maybe we should change
>that in 2.0?

No, this would be a bad idea.

A standard test for the existence of a list element is 

if (is.null(x$z)) ....

Those would all need some other kind of test if this were changed.
Not a good idea at all!

Duncan Murdoch