[Rd] sum and partial argument name matching

Patrick Burns pburns at pburns.seanet.com
Sat Nov 20 21:55:49 CET 2004


"sum" (and  perhaps  other functions?) allows partial argument
name matching after its three-dots argument:

 > sum(1:4, NA, n=78, na.rm=FALSE)
[1] 10
 > sum(1:4, NA, n=78, na.rm=TRUE)
[1] 11

I can see there could be a discussion about whether or not this is
a bug, but I think all will agree that it's a might peculiar.

This is done in 2.0.1 but the same behavior is in 1.8.1.

 > version
         _             
platform i386-pc-mingw32
arch     i386          
os       mingw32       
system   i386, mingw32 
status                 
major    2             
minor    0.1           
year     2004          
month    11            
day      15            
language R  



Patrick Burns

Burns Statistics
patrick at burns-stat.com
+44 (0)20 8525 0696
http://www.burns-stat.com
(home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")



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