[Rd] "with" doesn't work with names with blanks

[Spencer Graves]

On 5/1/22 4:35 PM, Ben Bolker wrote:
> Think trimws() from base R would work too?


Yes.  Thanks.  sg

> 
> On Sun, May 1, 2022, 5:20 PM Spencer Graves <spencer.graves using prodsyse.com 
> <mailto:spencer.graves using prodsyse.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>     On 5/1/22 2:51 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>      > On 01/05/2022 3:41 p.m., Spencer Graves wrote:
>      >> Hello, All:
>      >>
>      >>
>      >>       Column names in a data.frame are not supposed to have trailing
>      >> blanks.  However, a CRAN package created one, which threw an
>     error with
>      >> "with".  Consider the following example:
>      >>
>      >>
>      >>   > (tst <- data.frame(1))
>      >>     X1
>      >> 1  1
>      >>   > names(tst) <- 'x '
>      >>   > tst$x
>      >> [1] 1
>      >>   > with(tst, x)
>      >> Error in eval(substitute(expr), data, enclos = parent.frame()) :
>         object 'x' not found>>
>      >>
>      >>       I think it's interesting that "tst$x" works, but
>     "with(txt, x)".
>      >>
>      >>
>      >>       Comments?
>      >
>      > tst$x works because of partial name matching.  (That leniency is
>     one of
>      > the reasons for advice to avoid using $ in programs.)  It would
>     be chaos
>      > if with() used partial name matching.
>      >
>      > You can use
>      >
>      > with(txt, `x `)
>      >
>      > to include the space in the name.
> 
> 
>     but to use that, I have to KNOW that the name is `x `, not `x`.  It
>     took
>     me a while to identify that as the source of the problem:  What I saw
>     was that "with(tst
> 
> 
>                And thanks for the reminder that you recommend avoiding
>     use of "$".
> 
> 
>                sg
> 
> 
>     p.s.  After I found the problem, I fixed it using
>     names(x) <- tis::stripBlanks(names(x))
> 
>      >
>      > Duncan Murdoch
>      >
>      >>
>      >>
>      >>       It's not a major problem, though it took me a while to
>      >> diagnose.  (I
>      >> reported it to the maintainer of the package that returned a
>     data.frame
>      >> with names with trailing blanks.)
>      >>
>      >>
>      >>       Thanks, for all your work in maintaining and upgrading R
>     -- and in
>      >> responding to emails from this list.
>      >>
>      >>
>      >>       Spencer Graves
>      >>
>      >>
>      >>   > sessionInfo()
>      >> R version 4.2.0 (2022-04-22)
>      >> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin17.0 (64-bit)
>      >> Running under: macOS Big Sur 11.6.5
>      >>
>      >> Matrix products: default
>      >> LAPACK:
>      >>
>     /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.2/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib
> 
>      >>
>      >>
>      >> locale:
>      >> [1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8
>      >>
>      >> attached base packages:
>      >> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>      >>
>      >> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>      >> [1] compiler_4.2.0 tools_4.2.0
>      >>   >
>      >>
>      >> ______________________________________________
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>      >
> 
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