From ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk  Fri Feb 27 14:36:11 2004
From: ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk (Prof Brian Ripley)
Date: Fri Feb 27 14:36:19 2004
Subject: [Rd] Re: [R] Is there a way to deactivate partial matching in R?
In-Reply-To: <20329.1077887449@www21.gmx.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0402271329090.3545-100000@gannet.stats>

[Moved to R-devel, as that is where `wishlist' items fit best.]

It is not currently possible.  Furthermore, the R base code is riddled
with uses of partial argument matching (check out the uses of rep(), for
example) and partial list matching, although from time to time I try to 
eradicate a bunch of them.

I don't see why in programatic uses of R you cannot always guarantee exact
matching (which will always win), if necessary by having ... as the first
formal argument to your function.  Can you give us an example of the need
to disable partial matching?

On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, "Jens Oehlschl?gel" wrote:

> 
> Dear R-experts,
> 
> I just tracked down a nasty bug in a dynamically parametrized function to
> wrong argument matching. As we get more and more complex applications build on
> top of R (like bioconductor) partial matching gets more and more dangerous. I
> would like to deactivate partial matching in R (partial argument matching as
> well as partial matching of list elements), e.g. using an environment
> variable. If this is currently not possible this would be my current most important
> wishlist topic. 
> 
> Best regards
> 
> 
> Jens Oehlschl?gel

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595


[Rd] Re: [R] Is there a way to deactivate partial matching in R?
Prof Brian Ripley