extension to missing()? {was "hist() ... helpful warning? (PR#8376)"}

Hi Martin,

    AndrewC> I didn't occur to me to check the plot.histogram()
    AndrewC> help page.  

[ even though it's prominently mentioned on  help(hist)  ?? ]

Yes.  I expected plot.histogram() was something that no-one ever
calls directly (and I still expect that!), and I expected hist()
to pass everything on to plot.histogram().

I guess I think the most elegant design would be to remove all
plotting functionality from hist(), and put all arguments into
plot.histogram().  Or make histogram objects store everything.
But, I expect you can't changed this now, for compatability / user 
familiarity reasons...

    AndrewC> Perhaps it might be helpful to document in the
    AndrewC> hist() help page which attributes are stored in the
    AndrewC> hist() object.  
you mean the 'histogram' object.

Yes.

Yes, that might be helpful; diffs against
  https://svn.R-project.org/R/trunk/src/library/graphics/man/hist.Rd
are welcome.

I added it to my R-TODO.  (I doubt I will be able to get to this
for about a year... I am at the oppressive beginning of an obnoxious
degree program!)

and of course
    is.miss <- lapply(formals(), function(n) missing(n))
``works'' but trivially {why ?} and hence not usefully.

R's introspection capabilities are a little mysterious to me.

The missing() docs mention that it should be improved in future.
That might be a better long-term solution?

Cheers,
Andrew