[R] Passing (Optional) Arguments

[Jason Q. McClintic]

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Sir:

Thank you for your assistance. I am most interested in your suggestion

| You can use list(...) in foo3, and manually split the args to those
| that
| belong in foo1 and those that belong in foo2, and then construct calls
| from them.  (This allows you to recognize args that don't go to either
| place, and signal errors.)

as I am not especially interested in managing ever growing lists of
arguments, especially in functions where there is a choice of methods
each with its own distinct requisite arguments.

Is this an example of what you mean?

	 foofun<-function(...){tf<-is.list(list(...));return(tf)}

which, for instance, can be invoked as:

	foofun(a=1,b=2,c=3)

and returns TRUE. This makes sense to me given arguments are supplied.
Is the following in this context the correct way to handle "missing"
arguments to a function--assuming someone is supposed to supply a, b, and c?

	foofun<-function(...){

	  argList<-list(...);
	  if(is.null(argList$a)==TRUE){argList$a<-1};
	  if(is.null(argList$b)==TRUE){argList$b<-2};
	  if(is.null(argList$c)==TRUE){argList$c<-3};

	  return(argList$a*argList$b*argList$c);

	}

Then would it be appropriate to use an "else if"-type construction to
check for invalid argument types.

How would I know when there are extra args? If I use the second version
of foofun and invoke it as

	foofun(a=1,b=2,c=3,d=4)

then I get 6 even though d is unused without an error message. How can I
have it check? I think about trying to find the intersection of the set
of desired argument names with the given set of argument names and if
the intersection is not as desired, then return some sort of warning.
Perhaps using ifelse?

Thanks again for your assistance.

Sincerely,

Jason Q. McClintic
- --
Jason Q McClintic
UST MB 1945
2115 Summit Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55105
jqmcclintic at stthomas.edu
mccl0219 at tc.umn.edu

"It is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws, we must protect
ourselves with mathematics."--Bruce Schneier

Duncan Murdoch wrote:
| Jason Q. McClintic wrote:
|> Dear List:
|>
|> In short, I am writing a number of functions as building blocks for
|> other functions and have some questions about scoping and passing
arguments.
|>
|> Suppose I have functions foo1, foo2, and foo3 such that:
|>
|> 	foo1<-function(a=1,b=TRUE,c=FALSE){#do stuff};
|> 	foo2<-function(x=1,y=FALSE,z=c(1,2,3,4)){#do stuff};
|> 	foo3<-function(lambda,...){lambda*foo1()*foo2()};
|>
|> I want to be able to pass a,b,c,x,y,z to the functions foo1 and foo2
|> though foo3 (whether I define default values or not). How do I do this?
|> I read a bit in the wiki about problems with partial argument matching
|> and argument matching (lesson: make argument names not match truncated
|> versions of other argument names in the "target" function).
|>
| That's tricky, because ... becomes one big list.  You have a few choices:
|
| foo1 and foo2 can gain a ... arg, and ignore it.  Then you pass ... to
| both of them.  Problem:  you can pass typos to them and won't get a
| complaint.
|
| foo3 can gain a,b,c,x,y,z args, and pass those along to foo1 and foo2.
| Problem:  duplication, maintenance problems, etc.
|
| You can use list(...) in foo3, and manually split the args to those that
| belong in foo1 and those that belong in foo2, and then construct calls
| from them.  (This allows you to recognize args that don't go to either
| place, and signal errors.)
|
| You can pass foo1Args and foo2Args as lists to foo3, and construct calls
| from those, e.g.
|
| foo3 <- function(lambda, foo1Args, foo2Args)
|   lambda*do.call(foo1, foo1Args)*do.call(foo2,foo2Args)
|
| There are other options (e.g. using local versions of foo1 and foo2
| within foo3) that  are variations on the ones above.
|
| It's hard to give good advice on this, because whatever you do will be a
| tradeoff.  You'll see variations on all of the above in the base packages.
|
| Duncan Murdoch
|> To get a better feel for things I've been playing with examples such as:
|>
|> 	b<-c(0.25,0.25);
|> 	fun<-function(a=1,...){a*b};
|>
|> fun() returns 0.25 0.25 as expected.
|> fun(a=2) returns 0.5 0.5 as expected.
|> However, fun(b=1) returns 0.25 0.25 when I want to overwrite b with the
|> value 1 and have it return 1.
|>
|> Likewise with
|>
|> 	fun<-function(a=1,...){a*return(b)};
|>
|> any argument I supply for b seems to be ignored.
|>
|> I understand as b is not defined within the function when I enter
|>
|> 	fun()
|>
|> lexical scoping means R looks for b up one level and, finding b, uses it.
|>
|> Thanks for any/all help.
|>
|> Sincerely,
|>
|> Jason Q. McClintic
|> --
|> Jason Q McClintic
|> UST MB 1945
|> 2115 Summit Avenue
|> St. Paul, MN 55105
|> jqmcclintic at stthomas.edu
|> mccl0219 at tc.umn.edu
|>
|> "It is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws, we must protect
|> ourselves with mathematics."--Bruce Schneier
|>
|> ______________________________________________
|> 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.
|>
|
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