[R] function masking and gmp questions

[Carl Witthoft]

The problem is that I can't 'insert' the :: operator inside an existing 
function.  (Well, I could, but that would mean rewriting the function)

I was hoping for a way to call the function, in this case turnpoints() 
in some way that told turnpoints itself to look for base::apply

Carl


On 1/3/11 7:28 PM, David Winsemius wrote:
>
> On Jan 3, 2011, at 7:17 PM, Carl Witthoft wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> Here's the problem I ran into: the gmp package has a method for
>> apply() so it masks the base::apply function. With gmp installed, I
>> tried to run the function turnpoints() from the pastecs package. It
>> fails because it calls apply() internally, like this:
>>
>> apply(mymatrix,1,max,na.rm=TRUE)
>> ,
>> but the code in the gmp package which sets up the operator overload
>> for apply() strictly limits the arguments to the first three (a
>> matrix, a dimension, and a function). I get, no surprise:
>>
>> Rgames> xs<-sin(seq(1,100)/10)
>> Rgames> turnpoints(xs)
>> Error in apply(ex, 1, max, na.rm = TRUE) :
>> unused argument(s) (na.rm = TRUE)
>>
>> I'm assuming this is a bug in gmp code and will ask the owner of that
>> package about it.
>>
>> But in the meantime, is there some way to force a function to search
>> for functions in a different namespace, or at least to search with
>> packages set in a different order? That is, in this example, to make
>> turnpoints() look to package base before looking at gmp?
>
> In general the strategy is to use the "::" operator. Try :
>
> base::apply(mymatrix,1,max,na.rm=TRUE)
>
> (Untested in absence of example.)
>
>>
>> Thanks for your help and corrections to any of my assumptions and
>> conclusions here.
>>