a weird question about gdata:::

See end of message.


On 05/12/11 10:19, Erin Hodgess wrote:

Dear R People:

If I put in:

findPerl

Error: object 'findPerl' not found


But if I use:

gdata:::findPerl

function (perl, verbose = "FALSE")
{
? ? errorMsg<- "perl executable not found. Use perl= argument to
specify the correct path."
? ? if (missing(perl)) {
? ? ? ? perl = "perl"
? ? }
? ? perl = Sys.which(perl)
? ? if (perl == "" || perl == "perl")
? ? ? ? stop(errorMsg)
? ? if (.Platform$OS == "windows") {
? ? ? ? if (length(grep("rtools", tolower(perl)))> ?0) {
? ? ? ? ? ? perl.ftype<- shell("ftype perl", intern = TRUE)
? ? ? ? ? ? if (length(grep("^perl=", perl.ftype))> ?0) {
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? perl<- sub("^perl=\"([^\"]*)\".*", "\\1", perl.ftype)
? ? ? ? ? ? }
? ? ? ? }
? ? }
? ? if (verbose)
? ? ? ? cat("Using perl at", perl, "\n")
? ? perl
}
<environment: namespace:gdata>
Why does one work but not the other, please?

Because "findPerl" is ``not exported'' from the gdata namespace.

Uhhh, what does that mean? ?I have a vague idea, but I'm not sufficiently
confident/competent to elaborate. ?You'll just have to read up on
namespaces.
I'm *sure* namespaces are really a Good Thing, but they sure do add to the
mysteries of R usage.