How to get the namespace of a function?
On 2/2/2006 5:05 PM, Fernando Saldanha wrote:
I am trying to imitate "encapsulation" from other languages like Java or C++. Coming from that background, it bothers me that I can commit errors like the following:
x <- 1
f <- function(z) { y <- x; y + 1 } # Mistake: I should have written y <- z
f(10)
[1] 2 In a language like Java the interpreter would have noticed that x was an undeclared variable and an error message would be issued. R, on the other hand, allows the code to run, as x exists in the global environment. I was trying to avoid such situations by setting the environment of f to be NULL. If there is a better way to catch this type of errors I would be interested in knowing about it.
Put your code in a package, and use a namespace. This isn't perfect, but it gives you more control than you have when running scripts at the console. There's an article by Luke Tierney in one of R News 3/1 that explains the search order when namespaces are involved. Duncan Murdoch
FS On 2/2/06, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
On 2/2/2006 10:56 AM, Fernando Saldanha wrote:
I declared the environment of the function myfun to be NULL as follows: environment(myfun) <- NULL
Since version 2.1.0, it's been recommended that you use environment(myfun) <- baseenv() and since 2.2.0, you'll get a warning when using NULL (and you'll get an error in 2.3.0). But why would you want to do that? What are you trying to achieve? Duncan Murdoch
Later on I called that myfun and got an error message because the function index() in the zoo package was called inside myfun and was not visible: Error in myfun(args) : couldn't find function "index" I tried to use zoo::index() instead of index(), but that did not work. In fact, zoo::index does not work even in the command line:
z<-ts(1:5) z
Time Series: Start = 1 End = 5 Frequency = 1 [1] 1 2 3 4 5
index(z)
[1] 1 2 3 4 5
zoo::index(z)
Error in loadNamespace(name) : package 'zoo' does not have a name space How can I qualify index() so that it is visible inside the body of myfun? Thanks for any suggestions, FS
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