[Rd] bug: sticky symbol refs? (PR#9555)

[Wolfgang Huber]

Dear Peter,

would the problem persist if you maintained your favorite set of R
functions in a proper package rather than in some .RData file?

Packages offer a lot of goodies such as namespaces, version numbers, man
pages.

Best wishes
   Wolfgang

------------------------------------------------------------------
Wolfgang Huber  EBI/EMBL  Cambridge UK  http://www.ebi.ac.uk/huber


peter-m.schumacher at db.com wrote:
> 
> Hello. What happens in the following is that I create two simple functions, f and g, on the workspace. Then I
> replace g. When I then call f, it uses the old version of g. Now clearly, the circumstances for this to happen
> must be quite special and rare. But I'd say they're not pathological. It seems to require two things: 1) masked versions
> of f and g on a search position lower down the search list (but I'm not sure that's necessary), and 2) using
> source() to create the objects, but evaluated in a local environment, not the global one. I'm pretty confident that
> 2) is necessary for the bug.
> 
> Practical impact: like I suppose many users, I maintain my own R functions in a .RData file which I've always got
> attached at pos 2. Periodically I dump() them to file, take that file to another site, and source() them in there.
> However I don't want all the functions to be created on search pos'n 1, so I have a wrapper my.source() which creates
> them in a local environment then copies from that down to search pos 2. So that's all fairly innocent, and probably
> not uncommon.
> 
> How to reproduce:
> 
> ########## put this code in /temp/myFuns.R:
> `f` <-
> function (x)
> {
>     g(x)
> }
> `g` <-
> function(x)
> {
>     is.null(x)
> }
> ############
> 
> # now create a fresh .RData and attach it at pos 2:
>> save(list = character(0), file = "/temp/.RData")    # to create it
>> attach( "/temp/.RData", pos=2 )
> 
> # now source() /temp/myFuns.R in a local env, then copy new objs to search pos 2:
>> newEnv <- new.env()
>> eval(expression(source(file = "/temp/myFuns.R", local = T)), envir=newEnv)
>> for( objName in objects(envir = newEnv, all.names = T) ) {
>       assign(objName, get(objName, envir = newEnv), pos = 2)
> }
> 
>> f <- f # copy from pos 2 to workspace; (needed?)
>> g <- g # copy from pos 2 to workspace; (needed?)
>> f(1) # gives correct answer
> [1] FALSE
>> g <- function(x) stop( "this is the new g" )
>> f(1) # gives wrong answer; uses the old g();
> [1] FALSE
> 
> # now re-create f from scratch, assign under new name:
>> f2 <- eval( parse( text=deparse(f) ) )
>> f2(1) # gives correct answer
> Error in g(x) : this is the new g
> 
> # note that the original f() continues to malfunction;
> 
> --please do not edit the information below--
> 
> Version:
>  platform = i386-pc-mingw32
>  arch = i386
>  os = mingw32
>  system = i386, mingw32
>  status =
>  major = 2
>  minor = 4.1
>  year = 2006
>  month = 12
>  day = 18
>  svn rev = 40228
>  language = R
>  version.string = R version 2.4.1 (2006-12-18)
> 
> Windows XP Professional (build 2600) Service Pack 2.0
> 
> Locale:
> LC_COLLATE=English_United Kingdom.1252;LC_CTYPE=English_United Kingdom.1252;LC_MONETARY=English_United
> 
> Kingdom.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=English_United Kingdom.1252
> 
> Search Path:
>  .GlobalEnv, file:/temp/.RData, file:c:/schupl/R/myRLib/.RData, file:c:/schupl/R/myFinanceLib/.RData, file:c:/schupl/R/recycler/.RData,
> 
> package:stats, package:graphics, package:grDevices, package:utils, package:datasets, package:methods, Autoloads, package:base
> ---
> 
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