finding global variables in a function containing formulae
On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Hafen, Ryan P <Ryan.Hafen at pnnl.gov> wrote:
I need to find all global variables being used in a function and findGlobals() in the codetools package works quite nicely. However, I am not able to find variables that are used in formulae. Simply avoiding formulae in functions is not an option because I do not have control over what functions this will be applied to.
Here is an example to illustrate:
library(codetools)
xGlobal <- rnorm(10)
yGlobal <- rnorm(10)
plotFn1 <- function() {
plot(yGlobal ~ xGlobal)
}
plotFn2 <- function() {
y <- yGlobal
x <- xGlobal
plot(y ~ x)
}
plotFn3 <- function() {
plot(xGlobal, yGlobal)
}
findGlobals(plotFn1, merge=FALSE)$variables
# character(0)
findGlobals(plotFn2, merge=FALSE)$variables
# [1] "xGlobal" "yGlobal"
findGlobals(plotFn3, merge=FALSE)$variables
# [1] "xGlobal" "yGlobal"
I would like to find that plotFn1 also uses globals xGlobal and yGlobal. Any suggestions on how I might do this?
If this is only being applied to your own functions then we can have a
convention when writing them to help it in which we "declare" such
variables so that findGlobals can locate them:
plotFn1 <- function() {
xGlobal; yGlobal
plot(yGlobal ~ xGlobal)
}
findGlobals(plotFn1)
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