[R-pkg-devel] slightly polemic question re R CMD check

[David Hugh-Jones]

Hi all,

My package defines the following method and generic:

chop <- function (x, ...) UseMethod("chop")

chop.default <- function (x, breaks, labels, extend = NULL, drop = TRUE) {
... }

R CMD check then gives a warning:

W  checking S3 generic/method consistency (695ms)
   chop:
     function(x, ...)
   chop.default:
     function(x, breaks, labels, extend, drop)

   See section ‘Generic functions and methods’ in the ‘Writing R
   Extensions’ manual.

I can fix this by adding a ... argument to chop.default:

chop.default <- function (x, breaks, labels, extend = NULL, drop =
TRUE, ...)

But that makes the code less robust because e.g.

chop(x, Breaks = 1:3)

will no longer throw an error from the misspelled argument.

Or I can write:

chop(x, breaks, labels, extend, drop) UseMethod("chop")

but this means I cannot use a different interface for a different method.

This seems like a mistake. (That's the polemic.) Or am I missing a better
way? (That's the question.)

David

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