[R] Use of ellipses ... in argument list of optim(), integrate(), etc.

[Ravi Varadhan]

Thanks to Tony Plate, Vince Goulet, and Prof. Brian Ripley (I apologize for
not posting this to R-devel).  

It is nice to know that there can be no unintended side-effects of this new
"ellipsical convention", other than the inconvenience of having to provide
complete names of arguments after the ellipsis.

Best,
Ravi.

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Ravi Varadhan, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, The Center on Aging and Health

Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology 

Johns Hopkins University

Ph: (410) 502-2619

Fax: (410) 614-9625

Email: rvaradhan at jhmi.edu

Webpage:  http://www.jhsph.edu/agingandhealth/People/Faculty/Varadhan.html

 

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-----Original Message-----
From: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk] 
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 2:01 PM
To: Ravi Varadhan
Cc: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Use of ellipses ... in argument list of optim(),
integrate(), etc.

There is an entry in the NEWS file for 2.6.0:

 		CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.6.0


SIGNIFICANT USER-VISIBLE CHANGES

     o	integrate(), nlm(), nlminb(), optim(), optimize() and uniroot()
 	now have '...' much earlier in their argument list.  This
 	reduces the chances of unintentional partial matching but
 	means that the later arguments must be named in full.

and there was a spate of instances of 'unintentional partial matching' at 
the time.

I have have no idea what you mean by 'ellipses or .' -- this is literally 
'...', and ellipses (e.g. Unicode U+226) do not work. From 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis

   Most programming languages other than Perl6 require the ellipsis to be
   written as a series of periods; a single (Unicode) ellipsis character
   cannot be used.

Please use R-devel for questions about the design and development of R 
(see the posting guide).


On Thu, 13 Mar 2008, Ravi Varadhan wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
>
> I have noticed that there is a change in the use of ellipses or . in R
> versions 2.6.1 and later.  In versions 2.5.1 and earlier, the . were
always
> at the end of the argument list, but in 2.6.1 they are placed after the
main
> arguments and before method control arguments.  This results in the user
> having to specify the exact (complete) names of the control arguments,
i.e.
> partial matching is not allowed.
>
>
>
> An example with integrate() :
>
>
>
>> integrate(function(x) exp(-x^2), lower=-Inf, upper=L, subdiv=1000)
>
>
>
> Error in f(x, ...) : unused argument(s) (subdiv = 1000)
>
>
>
>> integrate(function(x) exp(-x^2), lower=-Inf, upper=L, subdivisions=1000)
>
>
>
> 1.633051 with absolute error < 1.6e-06
>
>
>
>
>
> Here is an example with optim():
>
>
>
>> res <- optim(50, fw, meth="BFGS", control=list(maxit=20000, temp=20,
> parscale=20))
>
>
>
> Error in fn(par, ...) : unused argument(s) (meth = "BFGS")
>
>
>
>
>
> FYI, I am using R version 2.6.1 on Windows XP.
>
>
>
> May I ask what the rationale behind this change is and also about the pros
> and cons of the two different ways of specifying (.)?
>
>
>
> Thank you very much.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Ravi.
>
>
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
>
> Ravi Varadhan, Ph.D.
>
> Assistant Professor, The Center on Aging and Health
>
> Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology
>
> Johns Hopkins University
>
> Ph: (410) 502-2619
>
> Fax: (410) 614-9625
>
> Email: rvaradhan at jhmi.edu
>
> Webpage:  http://www.jhsph.edu/agingandhealth/People/Faculty/Varadhan.html
>
>
>
>
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>
>
>
>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595