[Rd] Darwinian software development and the library function

[Charlotte Maia]

Hi Spencer,

Sorry, I wasn't very clear in my initial post.
The function print.foo (myfoo, ...) won't pass R check (unless one
overwrites print first).
One has to write print.foo (x, ...), which in my personal opinion, can
be problematic.

In my oosp package, I have overwritten print (along with a few others).
Initially, I overwrote both print and print.default.
However now, I merely use print = function (...) base::print (...).

Not really a generic, however it acts exactly the same (I think...).
Plus Rd documentation still documents print.mymethod in the usual way.


kind regards
Charlotte


On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 4:41 AM, spencerg <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com> wrote:
> Hi, Charlotte:
>
>     I'm not sure what you mean.  If you mean writing something like
> "print.foo (myfoo, ...)", this is relatively benign I suppose, but I avoid
> it where feasible.  On multiple occasions, I've pushed collaborators and
> even maintainers of other packages to change this or allow me to change it
> to conform to the standard;  if my memory is correct, there have been
> several violations of this standard in the "fda" package, which are no
> longer there because I changed them.  If a user with an object "x" of class
> "foo" writes print(x=x) or print(foo=x), I'm not sure what it would do, but
> it might not be what you want.
>
>     My "sos" package masks "?".  However, I don't like it.  I generally
> consider such to be potentially user hostile, and whenever feasible, I
> prefer to avoid such code.  I did it in this case for a couple of reasons.
>  First, using "?" (actually "???") seems so much easier to remember than
> "findFn" that it justifies this transgression of standard protocol.  Second,
> one of the leading figures in the R community (Duncan Murdoch) contributed
> suggested we do this and contributed the code.
>
>     If you change the definition of "print" itself, that seems to me to be a
> much bigger issue, with consequences much more difficult to predict.  If
> someone else also overwrites "print" making it different and incompatible
> with yours, then your code may not work or theirs may not, depending on
> which gets loaded first in the search path.  Worse, your code cannot
> possibly have been tested as thoroughly as the standard code.  If your code
> includes a subtle bug that only occurs under special circumstances, it may
> be hard for the person experiencing the problem to find, because they don't
> expect it.
>
>     Hope this helps.
>     Spencer
>
>
> Charlotte Maia wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Legend has it, that polite R programmers don't overwrite, say, the
>> print function.
>> However, this seems quite un-Darwinian to me (especially given that I
>> don't want to call all my arguments x and y).
>> I might want a function print.foo (myfoo, ...).
>>
>> So I decided to be very impolite (in one of my packages) and overwrite
>> a few standard generics.
>> Plus, to the best of my knowledge it doesn't interfere with normal use
>> (yay...).
>>
>> This brings us to the library function.
>> Which by default gives a whole lot of warnings loading my package (and
>> any other package that does something similar), scaring off polite R
>> programmers and perhaps some mainstream R users.
>>
>> I'm starting to think that the default for library, should be
>> warn.conflicts=FALSE.
>> However, just reading the documentation, I noticed a reference to
>> something called .conflicts.OK.
>> Not sure what that does, however if it does what it sounds like, then
>> it largely fixes the problem.
>>
>> The biggest issue though, is whether or not one should be impolite
>> (i.e. Darwinian) and overwrite print etc in the first place...?
>>
>> I'm inclined to go in favour of overwriting the functions.
>> However, it has the potential to introduce some technical problems.
>>
>> Other's opinions appreciated.
>>
>>
>> kind regards
>>
>
>
> --
> Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
> President and Chief Operating Officer
> Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
> 751 Emerson Ct.
> San José, CA 95126
> ph:  408-655-4567
>
>


-- 
Charlotte Maia
http://sites.google.com/site/maiagx