[Rd] anonymous function parsing bug?

Wilm Schumacher wilm.schumacher at gmail.com
Fri Oct 21 15:10:08 CEST 2016


Hi,

I hope this is the correct list for my question. I found a wired 
behaviour of my R installation on the evaluation of anonymous functions.

minimal working example

###
f<-function(x) {
     print( 2*x )
}(2)

class(f)

f(3)

f<-function(x) {
     print( 2*x )
}(4)(5)

f(6)
###

leads to

###
 > f<-function(x) {
+ print( 2*x )
+ }(2)
 >
 > class(f)
[1] "function"
 >
 > f(3)
[1] 6
Error in f(3) : attempt to apply non-function
 >
 > f<-function(x) {
+ print( 2*x )
+ }(4)(5)
 >
 > f(6)
[1] 12
Error in f(6) : attempt to apply non-function

###

is this a bug or desired behavior? Using parenthesis of coures solves 
the problem. However, I think the operator precedence could be the 
problem here. I looked at the "./src/main/gram.y" and I think that the 
line 385
     |    FUNCTION '(' formlist ')' cr expr_or_assign %prec LOW
should be of way higher precedence. But I cannot forsee the side effects 
of that (which could be horrible in that case).

If this is the desired behaviour and not a bug, I'm very interested in 
the rational behind that.

Best wishes,

Wilm

ps:

$ R --version
R version 3.3.1 (2016-06-21) -- "Bug in Your Hair"



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