[R] R function writing question

[Thomas Lumley]

On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Rachel Merriman wrote:

> Hi there!
> I'm looking for a better way of getting the following code working --
> can you help?  Instead of having to type in:
> 
> binarymissing(y ~ x1 + x2,data=mydata,na.action=na.keep)
> 
> as my function call, I would prefer not having to type in
> na.action=na.keep    each time as this will always be the same.

options(na.action=na.keep) 
will set the global default na.action.

Alternatively add the line
      if(is.null(mf$na.action)) mf$na.action=as.name("na.keep")
after  mf<-match.call()
[or more generally
 if(is.null(mf$na.action)) mf$na.action==formals(binarymissing)$na.action
which will fill in the actual default value]

The reason that the obvious approach doesn't work is that
match.call() returns the call that was actually typed, which has no
na.action argument. This is then turned into a model.frame call with no
na.action argument, which means that the default
for model.frame, ie getOption("na.action"), is used. It's not
completely clear whether this is a bug.

One interesting question is whether we should have an option to
match.call() that fills in defaults by looking at formals(call[[1]]).


	-thomas

Thomas Lumley
Assistant Professor, Biostatistics
University of Washington, Seattle

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