[Rd] Recursive objects

[Hadley Wickham]

> I never use is.recursive/is.atomic because the definition they use for
> an object to be recursive doesn't usually coincide with what I am
> interested in. (If you want to know what that definition is you can
> look at the source code, coerce.c:1790.) In computing on the language I
> would want one notion where pretty much only calls are recursive in
> the sense of having componets that need to be recursed into (you can
> see how that is handled in the byte code compiler which is in the
> sources as a noweb file). At the internal level, for example in the
> GC, _every_ object is recursive in the sence of needing to be checked
> for pointers to other objects, because of the attribute field.

Thanks Luke, I'll check those references out.

> There have been discussions of this previeously -- you might search
> the archive.

Any hints as to what to search for?

Hadley

-- 
Assistant Professor / Dobelman Family Junior Chair
Department of Statistics / Rice University
http://had.co.nz/