Can body() return a function's body intact, in order, and as characters ready for editing?

Is my understanding correct that the body()
function currently can't return a function's body
intact, in order, and as characters ready for
editing?
Yes, that's not what body() returns.  You can get what you want by 
printing the result of body(), e.g.

capture.output(print(body(f)))

However, your use of paste below isn't going to work on multi-line 
functions.

Duncan Murdoch
My testing and reading of body()'s help indicate
that it can not.

Here's what I'm seeing.

Consider pasting

     1+

and a function containing

     x^2

together to get

     1+x^2

As you can see below, body() reports three
elements, out of order.

     >  f<-function(x) x^2; b<-body(f); paste("1+",b, sep="")
     [1] "1+^" "1+x" "1+2

I realize that this might be worked around with
something like

     >  f<-function(x) x^2; b<-do.call(paste,as.list(c(deparse(body(f)),sep=""))); paste("1+",b, sep="")
     [1] "1+x^2"

However, I'm asking a different question.

Is my understanding correct that body() can't
return a function's body intact, in order, and as
characters ready for editing?

Thanks,
Kingsley

sessionInfo()
R version 2.12.1 (2010-12-16)
Platform: i486-pc-linux-gnu (32-bit)

locale:
  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US       LC_NUMERIC=C         LC_TIME=en_US
  [4] LC_COLLATE=en_US     LC_MONETARY=C        LC_MESSAGES=en_US
  [7] LC_PAPER=en_US       LC_NAME=C            LC_ADDRESS=C
[10] LC_TELEPHONE=C       LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

other attached packages:
  [1] optimx_0.88        setRNG_2009.11-1   minqa_1.1.13       Rcpp_0.9.2
  [5] Rvmmin_2011-2.11   Rcgmin_2011-2.10   ucminf_1.0-5       BB_2011.2-1
  [9] quadprog_1.5-3     numDeriv_2010.11-1 rgp_0.2-3          snowfall_1.84
[13] snow_0.3-3         rrules_0.1-0       emoa_0.4-3

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tcltk_2.12.1 tools_2.12.1

Sys.getlocale()
[1] "LC_CTYPE=en_US;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_US;LC_COLLATE=en_US;LC_MONETARY=C;LC_MESSAGES=en_US;LC_PAPER=en_US;LC_NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US;LC_IDENTIFICATION=C"

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Can body() return a function's body intact, in order, and as characters ready for editing?

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