clearNames and unname
On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 10:02 AM, Martin
Maechler<maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
"MM" == Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> ? ? on Thu, 3 Sep 2009 16:14:24 +0200 writes:
"HW" == Hadley Wickham <hadley at rice.edu> ? ? on Thu, 3 Sep 2009 08:16:27 -0500 writes:
? ?HW> Just noticed these two functions (clearNames is stats and unname in
? ?HW> base) that do the same thing.
? ?MM> clearNames looks like an accident. ?unname() has existed for
? ?MM> much longer {and as someone else said},
? ?MM> has been more general, too.
Hmm, the first part in the above may be wrong:
clearNames() has been part of the 'nls' package (before that
was integrated into 'stats'),
and the code of 'nls' may well have been almost as old as the
unname() function :
I see both in ?R 0.90.1 ?(December 15, 1999).
I see only about 5 usages of clearNames() in CRAN packages, and
none in the 300+ Bioconductor "Rpacks" ?packages.
Consequently, I'm proposing to deprecate ?clearNames() {for
unname()}.
Fine with me. I had forgotten that we even wrote clearNames() for the nls package.