[Rd] .First and base reorganization in R 1.9.0

[Mark.Bravington at csiro.au]

I noticed that, in R1.9.0 beta where the old 'base' package has been split into 4, '.First' gets executed with just the new 'base' loaded, before 'stats' 'utils' and 'graphics' are available. The NEWS file does warn that this will be the case for .Rprofile, but doesn't mention .First.

Is this actually the intended behaviour where .First is concerned? I've always found it useful to think of the auto-executing property of .First as mimicking what would happen if you just typed .First() once the prompt was available, but this is no longer the case. [And if people really want code that executes without stats etc., they can always use .Rprofile.]

Obviously it can be worked round by including library( utils) etc. in .First, but it does create some version issues [well, my packages would need changing, anyway :), whereas apart from this they work under both 1.8.1 and 1.9.0.].

Just thought I'd check

Mark

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Mark Bravington
CSIRO (CMIS)
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Mark.Bravington at csiro.au