[R] subsetting within a function

[Thomas Lumley]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, Pamela McCaskie wrote:
> And so my attempt to wrap a simple function around this looks like:
> test.fun <- function(formula, mydata, sub=NULL){
>  subs <- with(mydata, eval(sub))
>  fit.glm <- glm(formula=formula, data=mydata, family=binomial, subset=subs)
>  return(fit.glm)
> }
>
> But when I tested it out with
> test <- test.fun(y~x1+x2, mydata=testdata, sub=expression(SEX==0))
>
> I get:
> Error in "[.data.frame"(structure(list(N_ASTHMA = as.integer(c(0, 0, 0,  :
>        invalid subscript type

I get a different error: it may be that you have an object called `subs` 
in the global environment

> I'm guessing that it's looking in the global environment for
> subs,

More precisely, it is looking in environment where `formula` was created, 
which happens to be the global environment.

This is the sort of thing that happens with the fitting functions because 
they go to such lengths to break the basic scoping of R.


You probably have to substitute() the evaluated subset into the glm call.

   fit.glm <- eval(substitute(glm(formula=formula, data=mydata,
      family=binomial, subset=subset),list(subset=subs)))


 	-thomas