[Rd] unexpected behaviour when defining a function

[Deepayan Sarkar]

On 9/11/06, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Sep 2006, Deepayan Sarkar wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I know S manuals used to warn against using the same names for a
> > variable and a function, but I have never seen that cause problems in
> > R, so I usually don't pay much attention to it.
>
> But in this case you have a promise.  (BTW, it can still cause problems in
> R, hence the following NEWS item for 2.4.0:
>
>         Lookup for S3 methods is confined to functions: previously a
>         non-function 'fun.class' could have masked a function of the
>         same name.
> )
>
> Note that you do have to look at an object to find out if it is a
> function, and that means forcing promises, the problem here.
>
> > Which is why the following behaviour came as a surprise:
> >
> > > bar <- function() 1
> > > foo <- function(bar = bar()) {
> > +     bar
> > + }
> > > foo(9)
> > [1] 9
> > > foo()
> > Error in foo() : recursive default argument reference
> >
> > Exactly what rule am I violating here?
>
> That an argument default value cannot refer to the argument.
>
> This is an argument with a default value that is relying on lazy
> evaluation. When you come to evaluate 'bar' it is a promise with value
> bar().  Evaluating that value looks up 'bar' from the evaluation frame of
> foo() and the first candidate it finds is the argument it is the process
> of evaluating, hence the message.
>
> > The following gives a slightly different error, but I assume it has a
> > similar origin:
> >
> > bar <- function() 1
> > foo <- function(bar) {
> >     if (missing(bar)) bar <- bar()
> >     bar
> > }
> > foo()
>
> It says
>
> > Error in foo() : argument "bar" is missing, with no default
>
> and that is caused by bar <- bar():  it is looking for argument bar (to
> see if it is a function which can be called) and that argument has no
> default.  (I would have thought that one was clear enough.)

It is clear enough once I think about it (I was probably hoping that
it would continue searching, but that does not make sense). Thanks for
the explanation.

Deepayan


>
> --
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>