4 messages · Edna Bell, Berwin A Turlach, Duncan Murdoch +1 more
Dear R Gurus: I'm working slowly through "R Programming for Bioinformatics", which is really interesting! Anyway, my question now is: what determines if a function is a builtin vs. a closure, please? For instance:
typeof(sqrt)
[1] "builtin"
typeof(mean)
[1] "closure"
Thanks, Edna Bell
G'day Edna, On Sat, 14 Mar 2009 23:00:12 -0500
Anyway, my question now is: what determines if a function is a builtin vs. a closure, please?
The help page of typeof states that:
The possible values are listed in the structure 'TypeTable' in
'src/main/util.c'. Current values are [...]
'"closure"' (function)
'"special"' and '"builtin"' (basic functions and operators)
Which might raise the question what "basic functions" are. But since
"basic" and "primitive" are synonyms it is not hard to guess that
primitive functions are returning "special" or "builtin"; and the help
page of ?is.primitive confirms this.
Note, a return value of "special" is possible for a primitive function:
R> UseMethod
function (generic, object) .Primitive("UseMethod")
R> typeof(UseMethod)
[1] "special"
HTH.
Cheers,
Berwin
Dear R Gurus: I'm working slowly through "R Programming for Bioinformatics", which is really interesting! Anyway, my question now is: what determines if a function is a builtin vs. a closure, please?
Closure is the normal type of function written in R code. The other special types are built in to R; users can't create them except by modifying the R source code. For details see the R Internals manual. Duncan Murdoch
For instance:
typeof(sqrt)
[1] "builtin"
typeof(mean)
[1] "closure" Thanks, Edna Bell
______________________________________________ R-help at r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Thank you
On 15/03/2009 12:00 AM, Edna Bell wrote:
Dear R Gurus: I'm working slowly through "R Programming for Bioinformatics", which is really interesting! Anyway, my question now is: ?what determines if a function is a builtin vs. a closure, please?
Closure is the normal type of function written in R code. ?The other special types are built in to R; users can't create them except by modifying the R source code. ?For details see the R Internals manual. Duncan Murdoch
For instance:
typeof(sqrt)
[1] "builtin"
typeof(mean)
[1] "closure" Thanks, Edna Bell
______________________________________________ R-help at r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
______________________________________________ R-help at r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Erin Hodgess Associate Professor Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences University of Houston - Downtown mailto: erinm.hodgess at gmail.com