[Rd] mysteriously persistent generic definition

Ross Boylan ross at biostat.ucsf.edu
Fri Oct 23 05:06:59 CEST 2009


Originally I made a function yearStop that took an argument "object".  I
made a generic, but later changed the argument to "x".  R keeps
resurrecting the old definition.  Could anyone explain what is going on,
or how to fix it?  Note particularly the end of the transcript below: I
remove the generic, verify that the symbol is undefined, make a new
function, and then make a generic.  But the generic does not use the
argument of the new function definition.

<quote>
> args(yearStop)
function (obj) 
NULL
> yearStop <- function(x) x at yearStop
> args(yearStop)
function (x) 
NULL
> setGeneric("yearStop")
[1] "yearStop"
> args(yearStop)
function (obj) 
NULL
> removeGeneric("yearStop")
[1] TRUE
> args(yearStop)
Error in args(yearStop) : object "yearStop" not found
> yearStop <- function(x) x at yearStop
> setGeneric("yearStop")
[1] "yearStop"
> args(yearStop)
function (obj) 
NULL
</quote>

R 2.7.1.  I originally read the definitions in from a file with ^c^l in
ESS; however, I typed the commands above by hand.

Thanks.
Ross Boylan



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