Convenience function to get unevaluated ... function arguments

I'll be glad to add it to the gtools package if it doesn't (immediately) go into one of the core packages.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 26, 2012, at 7:35 AM, "Bert Gunter" <gunter.berton at gene.com> wrote:

Indeed!

-- Bert

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 3:59 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net> wrote:

On Jul 24, 2012, at 4:39 PM, Bert Gunter wrote:

Folks:

Herein is a suggestion for a little R convenience function mainly to
obtain unevaluated ... function arguments. It arose from a query on
R-help on how to get these arguments. The standard (I think) idiom to
do this is via

match.call(expand.dots=FALSE)$...

However, Bill Dunlap pointed out that this repeats the argument
matching of the function call and suggested a couple of alternatives
that do not, one of which I've adapted as the following function,fun
(I'll comment on naming in a second):

fun <- as.list(substitute((...), env = parent.frame()))[-1]

I think instead:

fun <- function() as.list(substitute((...), env = parent.frame()))[-1]

--
David.

Typical usage would be:

f <- function(x, ...,y)fun()

e.g.

f(x = 5,z=sin(a),y=3,stop("oh"),w=warning("Yikes"))

$z
sin(a)

[[2]]
stop("oh")

$w
warning("Yikes")

It turns out that (surprisingly to me) the substitute idiom is faster
than the match.call idiom, although the difference appears
unimportant, since both are so fast. And it is a little slower when
wrapped into a function, anyway -- I wasn't able to figure out a
convenient way to wrap the match.call version into a function.

The question is where -- if anywhere -- should this little one-liner
go? Seems to me that there are 3 possibilities:
1. Nowhere. Unnecessary and trivial.  An entirely reasonable response,
imho; I leave it to guRus to make this judgment.

2. In with match.call(); in which case a name like match.dots would
seem appropriate.

3. In with substitute(); in which case something like substituteDots
to make the relationship clear might be appropriate.

If R core or others do want to use this, I would be happy to write the
line or two of additional documentation required (if no one else wants
to).

And to repeat... I know this is trivial, so no explanation or response
is needed if it is decided to ignore it.

Best,
Bert




--

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics

Internal Contact Info:
Phone: 467-7374
Website:

http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm

David Winsemius, MD
Heritage Laboratories
West Hartford, CT

--

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics

Internal Contact Info:
Phone: 467-7374
Website:
http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm