Function 'stopifnot' in R devel r72104 has this. head <- function(x, n = 6L) ## basically utils:::head.default() x[if(n < 0L) max(length(x) + n, 0L) else min(n, length(x))] If definition like utils:::head.default is intended, the index of 'x' should be wrapped in seq_len(...): x[seq_len(...)]