[Rd] legitimate use of :::

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 13/05/2014 12:14 PM, Knut Krueger wrote:
> Is there another new solution for this issue?
> especially I would like to use:
>
> utils:::.win32consoleCompletion
> the use of this is suggested in the completion.r file of utils:
>
> ## test some typical completion attempts
>       library(utils)
> testLine <- function(line, cursor = nchar(line))
> {
>       str(utils:::.win32consoleCompletion(line, cursor))
> }
>
> testLine("")
>

I think you are misunderstanding the comments in that file.  It's an 
internal set of tests for the package, so "test some typical completion 
attempts" is a description of the tests that follow, it's not a 
suggestion that you should be able to run those lines
from your package.

If you do want access to the completion mechanism from a package, you 
should write to its author (Deepayan Sarkar) and explain the kinds of 
things you need to do.  If you can convince him that giving you access 
is worth the trouble of exposing some of it to user-level code, then 
he'll export a function for you.  (I think it's unlikely to be 
.win32consoleCompletion, but who knows.)

Duncan Murdoch

> (full quote because of the age of the tread)
>
>
> Kind regards Knut
> Am 22.08.2013 20:57, schrieb Michael Friendly:
> > On 8/22/2013 7:45 AM, Uwe Ligges wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On 22.08.2013 07:45, Yihui Xie wrote:
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> So now R CMD check starts to warn against :::, but I believe sometimes
> >>> it is legitimate to use it when developing R packages. For example, I
> >>> have some utils functions that are not exported but I want to share
> >>> them across the packages that I maintain. I do not need to coordinate
> >>> with other authors about these internal functions since I'm the only
> >>> author and I know clearly what I'm doing, and I want to avoid copying
> >>> and pasting the code across packages just to avoid the NOTE in R CMD
> >>> check. What should I do in this case?
> >>
> >> Nothing. The way you describe above seems to be a reasonable usage, iff
> >> you are the same maintainer who knows what is going on. Other
> >> maintainers should not use one of your not exported (hence non API)
> >> functions, of course.
> >>
> >> Uwe Ligges
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Related to this is the use of other-package unexported utility functions
> > that don't pass Uwe's iff test, but I, as maintainer,
> > want to use in my package.
> >
> > Cases in point:  in heplots, I had used stats:::Pillai, stats:::Wilks,
> > stats:::Roy and stats:::LH for calculation in one of my functions.
> > Similarly, I had a need to use car:::df.terms, also unexported, but
> > don't want to ask John Fox to export it just for my use.  Uwe's
> > reply suggests that I should not be using car:::df.terms, however.
> >
> > To avoid the NOTEs (which often triggers a 'pls fix' upon submission to
> > CRAN), I simply copied/pasted these functions to my package, but this
> > seems wasteful.
> >
> > -Michael
> >
> >
>
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