[R] Adding meta-data when creating objects. e.g: changing "<-" so to (for example) add "creation time" - how-to and pros/cons?

[Barry Rowlingson]

On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 7:05 AM, Tal Galili <tal.galili at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Barry,
> With regards to the identical == FALSE, it didn't occur to me - great point,
> thank you.
> So question: how did you end up changing the "<-", so to enable the creation
> of the .metadata object?

 I haven't done that - it's just an idea off-the-cuff that might help.
Or it might break stuff.

 What I did do was to edit assign.c (or something) in the C source of
R to keep a timestamp attribute on any assigned object. It involved
recompiling R. I suppose it could be possible to instead edit it to
put the timestamp in a global .metadata object....

 However it might only be something you want done for objects in the
global workspace...

Barry