Just don't do it, surely? (was RE: [R] Retrieve ... argument values)

[Simon Fear]

Thanks for the insight.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk]
<snip>
> dots <- list(...)
> haveYlim <- "ylim" %in% names(dots)
> 
> is the sort of thing we still understand 5 years later.
> 
I didn't say "understand", I said "easily follow". Obviously how
"easily" is subjective and depends to some extent on 
frequency of use of this idiom.

<snip>
> Inadvertent partial matching for one. 

Ah yes! It is true that I often forget about this, mostly because
partial argument matching offends me greatly, and I never, 
knowingly, use it. Of course as a major contributor to the
R project (and that's an understatement, I know), you do have
to worry about this - users of your routines may like to use
partial matching. But I hope most of us don't.

Worse news is that my posted formulation would suffer the same 
problem if I had an explicit argument "ylimit" and called with 
a "ylim" in "..." intended for "par". That's just too horrible to 
contemplate.
 

Simon Fear
Senior Statistician
Syne qua non Ltd
Tel: +44 (0) 1379 644449
Fax: +44 (0) 1379 644445
email: Simon.Fear at synequanon.com
web: http://www.synequanon.com
 
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