[Rd] callCC in 2.7.0

[Luke Tierney]

On Sun, 30 Mar 2008, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:

> Also in trying it out again it seems that its not like
> on.exit but more like return:

Yes -- if you can point out what in the documentation ever gave the
idea it might be like on.exit then we can fix the documentation.

>
> F <- function(f) { f(10); print(2); f(20); 3}
> callCC(F)
>
> acts the same as:
>
> F <- function() { return(10); print(2); f(20); 3}
> F()
>
> and there is no documented way to restart F
> at the point it left off so I assume it can't.

The documentation descriped this as a downward-only version -- that is
standard terminology for a callCC that produces continuations that are
no longer valid after the callCC call exits.

Not sure why your original question was about "callCC in 2.7.0" -- I
believe callCC was added in 2.5.0, the same time as codetools became
recommended, and hasn't changed since.  It is not a function every R
user needs to have in their repertoire, but it can be very useful in
some situations.

luke

> On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 12:34 PM, Gabor Grothendieck
> <ggrothendieck at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think the only relationship to that is the name since
>> it does not appear to allow one to leave a function
>> in the middle of its processing and re-enter it back
>> at that point -- which is what would be needed.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 12:04 PM,  <h.wickham at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Would anyone like to explain if callCC in R 2.7.0 gives
>>>> anything that on.exit does not already provide?
>>>>
>>>> It seems that the exit condition once defined cannot
>>>> be added to overridden whereas with on.exit multiple
>>>> on.exit's add additional on.exits rather than being ignored.
>>>>
>>>> Is this important?
>>>
>>> It facilitates a completely different style of programming - see
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation-passing_style
>>>
>>> --
>>> http://had.co.nz/
>>>
>>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

-- 
Luke Tierney
Chair, Statistics and Actuarial Science
Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
    Actuarial Science
241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:      luke at stat.uiowa.edu
Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu