From ross at biostat.ucsf.edu  Wed Oct 28 20:14:04 2009
From: ross at biostat.ucsf.edu (Ross Boylan)
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:14:04 -0700
Subject: [Rd] mysteriously persistent generic definition
In-Reply-To: <1256267219.30505.148.camel@corn.betterworld.us>
References: <1256267219.30505.148.camel@corn.betterworld.us>
Message-ID: <1256757244.10798.39.camel@corn.betterworld.us>

Here's a self-contained example of the problem:

> foo <- function(obj) {return(3);}
> setGeneric("foo")
[1] "foo"
> removeGeneric("foo")
[1] TRUE
> foo <- function(x) {return(4);}
> args(foo)
function (x) 
NULL
> setGeneric("foo")
[1] "foo"
> args(foo)
function (obj) 
NULL

R 2.7.1.  I get the same behavior whether or not I use ESS.

The reason this is more than a theoretical problem:

> setMethod("foo", signature(x="numeric"), function(x) {return(x+4);})
Error in match.call(fun, fcall) : unused argument(s) (x = "numeric")

Ross



[Rd] mysteriously persistent generic definition
Ross Boylan