sub question

f = function(a) function() paste(a, a, sep="")
all.vars(~ fo(o)())

Peter Dalgaard wrote:

Gabor Grothendieck wrote:

On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Wacek Kusnierczyk

th some additional boring pedantry wrt. ?gsubfn, which says:

" If 'replacement' is a formula instead of a function then a one
    line function is created whose body is the right hand side of the
    formula and whose arguments are the left hand side separated by
    '+' signs (or any other valid operator).  The environment of the
    function is the environment of the formula.  If the arguments are
    omitted then the free variables found on the right hand side are
    used in the order encountered.  "

to my little mind, all of 'paste', 'rep', 'nchar', and 'x' in the
example above are *free variables* on the right of the formula.  you

The first three are functions, not variables.

They are still free variables, subject to the same rules of variable
lookup. Wacek is right: The RHS is scanned recursively for objects of
mode "name" _except_ when they appear as function names (i.e. if
subexpression e is mode "call", then forget e[[1]] and look at the
arguments in as.list(e)[-1]. Not sure if this also happens if e[[1]]
is not a name, e.g. in f(a)(b), do you get both a and b or just b?)

an interesting point.  the two calls to gsubfn below should, in this
particular case, be equivalent:

library(gsubfn)

f = function(a) function(b) paste(a, b, sep="")
gsubfn('o', ~ f('o')(o), 'foo')
# "foooo"
gsubfn('o', ~ f(o)('o'), 'foo')
# the match seems to be ignored in the formula?
the following fails, too:

f = function(a) function() paste(a, a, sep="")
gsubfn('o', ~ f(o)(), 'foo')
# o won't capture the match

this as well, though it's rather different:

f = function() 'oo'
gsubfn('o', ~ f(), 'foo')
# really can't ignore the matched pattern if a formula is given?


while an average statistician may never write such rubbish code, these
are trivialized examples, and for a language advertised as one from the
functional family this sort of code is not so unusual and it may be
surprising that it fails.