assignInNamespace and new bindings

On Tue, 31 May 2011, Romain Francois wrote:

Hello,

assignInNamespace refuses to assign an object to a name that is not already 
used in the namespace.

That's intentional, and as documented:

    ?assignInNamespace? and ?fixInNamespace? are invoked for their
    side effect of changing the object in the name space.
                   ^^^^^^^^

I very much doubt we want to allow adding objects.

Something like this would make it possible:

--- src/library/utils/R/objects.R	(revision 56024)
+++ src/library/utils/R/objects.R	(working copy)
@@ -252,8 +252,9 @@
            stop("environment specified is not a package")
        ns <- asNamespace(substring(nm, 9L))
    } else ns <- asNamespace(ns)
-    if(bindingIsLocked(x, ns)) {
-        unlockBinding(x, ns)
+    new_binding <- !exists(x,ns)
+    if( new_binding || bindingIsLocked(x, ns)) {
+        if(!new_binding) unlockBinding(x, ns)
        assign(x, value, envir = ns, inherits = FALSE)
        w <- options("warn")
        on.exit(options(w))

Romain

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Romain Francois
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