[Rd] methods/namespaces/possible bug

[Kasper Daniel Hansen]

Using

 > methods("plot")
  [1] plot.Date*          plot.HoltWinters*   plot.POSIXct*
  [4] plot.POSIXlt*       plot.TukeyHSD       plot.acf*
  [7] plot.data.frame*    plot.decomposed.ts* plot.default
[10] plot.dendrogram*    plot.density        plot.ecdf
[13] plot.factor*        plot.formula*       plot.hclust*
[16] plot.histogram*     plot.isoreg*        plot.lm
[19] plot.medpolish*     plot.mlm            plot.ppr*
[22] plot.prcomp*        plot.princomp*      plot.profile.nls*
[25] plot.spec           plot.spec.coherency plot.spec.phase
[28] plot.stepfun        plot.stl*           plot.table*
[31] plot.ts             plot.tskernel*

    Non-visible functions are asterisked

I don't see plot.function listed. As I read the man page for methods I  
would say that the search is just looking for functions with the right  
type of name.

If I define a plot.function in my global workspace, methods("plot")  
picks it up

 > plot.function = function() {print("blah")}
 > methods("plot")
  [1] plot.Date*          plot.HoltWinters*   plot.POSIXct*
  [4] plot.POSIXlt*       plot.TukeyHSD       plot.acf*
  [7] plot.data.frame*    plot.decomposed.ts* plot.default
[10] plot.dendrogram*    plot.density        plot.ecdf
[13] plot.factor*        plot.formula*       plot.function
[16] plot.hclust*        plot.histogram*     plot.isoreg*
[19] plot.lm             plot.medpolish*     plot.mlm
[22] plot.ppr*           plot.prcomp*        plot.princomp*
[25] plot.profile.nls*   plot.spec           plot.spec.coherency
[28] plot.spec.phase     plot.stepfun        plot.stl*
[31] plot.table*         plot.ts             plot.tskernel*

    Non-visible functions are asterisked

Based on this, I think that methods("plot") should return  
plot.function, so I am almost ready to take the bug word in my mouth.

When I debug the methods function it gets to the line
   S3reg <- ls(get(".__S3MethodsTable__.", envir = defenv), pattern =  
name)
where it searches the .__S3MethodsTable__. object. Consulting the help  
page it seems that this object is part of the namespace functionality.

My guess is that something goes wrong because function is a reserved  
word?

Kasper

This has been tested under R-2.7.1 on Mac OS X and under a not too  
recent version of R-devel under x86_64. My sessionInfo for the Mac  
version is

 > sessionInfo()
R version 2.7.1 (2008-06-23)
i386-apple-darwin8.10.1

locale:
en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tools_2.7.1