[Rd] assignInNamespace and new bindings

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Tue, 31 May 2011, Romain Francois wrote:

> Hello,
>
> assignInNamespace refuses to assign an object to a name that is not already 
> used in the namespace.

That's intentional, and as documented:

      ‘assignInNamespace’ and ‘fixInNamespace’ are invoked for their
      side effect of changing the object in the name space.
                     ^^^^^^^^

I very much doubt we want to allow adding objects.

>
> Something like this would make it possible:
>
> --- src/library/utils/R/objects.R	(revision 56024)
> +++ src/library/utils/R/objects.R	(working copy)
> @@ -252,8 +252,9 @@
>             stop("environment specified is not a package")
>         ns <- asNamespace(substring(nm, 9L))
>     } else ns <- asNamespace(ns)
> -    if(bindingIsLocked(x, ns)) {
> -        unlockBinding(x, ns)
> +    new_binding <- !exists(x,ns)
> +    if( new_binding || bindingIsLocked(x, ns)) {
> +        if(!new_binding) unlockBinding(x, ns)
>         assign(x, value, envir = ns, inherits = FALSE)
>         w <- options("warn")
>         on.exit(options(w))
>
> Romain
>
> -- 
> Romain Francois
> Professional R Enthusiast
> +33(0) 6 28 91 30 30
> http://romainfrancois.blog.free.fr
> http://romain-francois.com
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>
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>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
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