[R] Use and misuse of "update" function for non-models. Any views/recommendations??

[Søren Højsgaard]

Thanks, Luke Tierney - the documentation of update was exactly what prompted my question. Yet, I conclude that writing an update.myobject method is OK.
Regards
Søren
 
 
 

________________________________

Fra: Luke Tierney [mailto:luke at stat.uiowa.edu]
Sendt: ti 20-11-2007 14:54
Til: Prof Brian Ripley
Cc: Søren Højsgaard; r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Emne: Re: [R] Use and misuse of "update" function for non-models. Any views/recommendations??



On Tue, 20 Nov 2007, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> update() is generic, so the recommended approach would be to write a method
> for your objects.
>
> Creating your own function update() in a package would probably not break too
> much, as namespaces would protect most functions using the generic in stats.
> But it could be very confusing to users.

Maybe.  update is generic with a netral set of argument names; on the
other hand, the _documentation_ of update is not generic -- it is
specific to updating models. So there is opportunity for confusion
from that direction.

Best,

luke

>
> On Tue, 20 Nov 2007, Søren Højsgaard wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I wonder if it is "bad style" (or something worse) to create an "update"
>> function which does not work on model objects of the lm, glm etc. type.
>> Specifically, I have some graph objects (graphs as mathematical objects,
>> not as displays) which I want to alter and for that purpose I thought of
>> writing an update function. Would doing so violate a "deeper philosophy" in
>> the R system or have other unfortunate consequences. If so, I'm happy to
>> hear other suggestions...
>>
>> Regards
>> Søren
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
>
>

--
Luke Tierney
Chair, Statistics and Actuarial Science
Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
    Actuarial Science
241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:      luke at stat.uiowa.edu
Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu <http://www.stat.uiowa.edu/>