[Rd] specials and ::

[Kevin R. Coombes]

I know I'm a curmudgeon, but it seems to me that if their "company 
policy" is causing a problem while trying to use free software, then the 
company should pay to fix it.

   Kevin

On 8/26/2024 10:42 AM, Therneau, Terry M., Ph.D. via R-devel wrote:
> The survival package makes significant use of the "specials" argument of terms(), before
> calling model.frame; it is part of nearly every modeling function. The reason is that
> strata argments simply have to be handled differently than other things on the right hand
> side. Likewise for tt() and cluster(), though those are much less frequent.
>
> I now get "bug reports" from the growing segment that believes one should put
> packagename:: in front of every single instance.   For instance
>         fit <- survival::survdiff( survival::Surv(time, status) ~ ph.karno +
> survival::strata(inst),  data= survival::lung)
>
> This fails to give the correct answer because it fools terms(formula, specials=
> "strata").    I've stood firm in my response of "that's your bug, not mine", but I begin
> to believe I am swimming uphill.   One person responded that it was company policy to
> qualify everything.
>
> I don't see an easy way to fix survival, and even if I did it would be a tremendous amout
> of work.   What are other's thoughts?
>
> Terry
>
>
>