Message-ID: <51E09587.40905@xtra.co.nz>
Date: 2013-07-12T23:47:19Z
From: Rolf Turner
Subject: syntactical meaning of fullstop in R functions
In-Reply-To: <CADcQ+RpJMOudu3gXGQccdCwuqNJp_ZO-CU_UDwLoacH1h=N3Mw@mail.gmail.com>
On 13/07/13 08:57, Kay Cichini wrote:
> just found it myself:
>
> in '.GADM' the leading period designates an internal function - the source
> can be viewed with:
> getAnywhere('.GADM')
I think that's a bit misleading. In general, the names of functions (or
other objects) which
are "internal" to a package need *not* begin with a full stop. That is
just a convention that
the author of the "dismo" package is using. What makes an object
"internal" really is
not being exported in the NAMESPACE of the package.
The general impact of beginning the name of an object with a full stop
is to make that
object "invisible" to ls(). I.e. if you do an ls() of the environment
in which that object
"lives" then you will *not* see the name of that object unless you do
ls(.....,all.names=TRUE)
See help(ls).
cheers,
Rolf Turner