[Rd] The default behaviour of a missing entry in an environment

[Robert Gentleman]

Hi,

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 4:55 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> On 13/11/2009 7:26 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 13/11/2009 6:39 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Note that one should use inherits = FALSE argument on get and exists
>>>> to avoid returning objects from the parent, the parent of the parent,
>>>> etc.
>>>
>>> I disagree.  Normally you would want to receive those objects.  If you
>>> didn't, why didn't you set the parent of the environment to emptyenv()
>>> when
>>> you created it?
>>>
>>
>> $ does not look into the parent so if you are trying to get those
>> semantics you must use inherits = FALSE.
>
> Whoops, yes.  That's another complaint about $ on environments.

 That was an intentional choice. AFAIR neither $ nor [[ on
environments was not meant to mimic get, but rather to work on the
current environment as if it were a hash-like object. One can always
get the inherits semantics by simple programming, but under the model
you seem to be suggesting, preventing such behavior when you don't own
the environments in question is problematic.

  Robert

>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
>>
>>> x <- 3
>>> e <- new.env()
>>> "x" %in% names(e)
>>
>> [1] FALSE
>>>
>>> get("x", e) # oops
>>
>> [1] 3
>
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>



-- 
Robert Gentleman
rgentlem at gmail.com