[Rd] formals(x)<- drops attributes including class

Duncan Murdoch murdoch.duncan at gmail.com
Sun Mar 13 15:19:13 CET 2016


On 13/03/2016 9:54 AM, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
> Just checking in to see whether it is intended or not that assigning
> new formals to a function/closure causes any attributes to be dropped:

For srcref, yes.  Changing the formals or body of a function would 
usually make them invalid.

I think it makes a reasonable default behaviour for other attributes as 
well.

Duncan Murdoch

>
> EXAMPLE:
>> fcn <- structure(function() {}, foo="foo", class=c("foo"))
>> str(fcn)
> function ()
>   - attr(*, "srcref")=Class 'srcref'  atomic [1:8] 1 18 1 30 18 30 1 1
>    .. ..- attr(*, "srcfile")=Classes 'srcfilecopy', 'srcfile' <environment: 0x000
> 000000c00d128>
>   - attr(*, "foo")= chr "foo"
>   - attr(*, "class")= chr "foo"
>
>> formals(fcn) <- list(a=1)
>> str(fcn)
> function (a = 1)
>> attributes(fcn)
> NULL
>
>
> TROUBLESHOOTING:
>>From the definition of formals()<-, it's quite clear why this happens:
>
>> `formals<-`
> function (fun, envir = environment(fun), value)
> {
>      bd <- body(fun)
>      as.function(c(value, if (is.null(bd) || is.list(bd)) list(bd) else bd),
>          envir)
> }
> <bytecode: 0x000000000b97a848>
> <environment: namespace:base>
>
>
> I'm fine with this, but I just wanted to make sure it's not overlooked.
>
> /Henrik
>
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