No more autload() calls in .First.sys() ?
Jeffrey Horner wrote:
[...]
This raises an interesting topic for me:
In R-2.3.1, .First.sys() autloads() a few functions from the various
default packages (utils, stats, methods, graphics) IF those packages
weren't specified in the default packages option (or the environment
variable R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES). For instance, if a user doesn't want the
utils package automatically loaded, then .First.sys() does this:
sch <- search()
if(! "package:utils" %in% sch) {
autoload("example", "utils")
autoload("methods", "utils")
autoload("str", "utils")
}
which will automagically load utils if a call to example, methods, or
str is made (why just those three? why not others in utils). I presume
there was some heuristic to determine exactly which functions were
autoloaded.
To answer this, all I had to do is look at the subversion log: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- r27733 | ripley | 2003-12-21 04:21:33 -0600 (Sun, 21 Dec 2003) | 3 lines allow all the standard examples to run with R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES=NULL by judicious autoloading ------------------------------------------------------------------------- That makes sense. But what about the change for R-trunk?
Now in R-trunk today, I see that there are no autloaded functions set up from .First.sys() for any of the default packages. So if R is started with R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES=NULL, then no default packages will be loaded and no functions will be set up via autoload(). Why? Jeff