From ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk  Sat Sep 13 09:00:06 2003
From: ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk (Prof Brian Ripley)
Date: Sat Sep 13 08:59:31 2003
Subject: [Rd] glitch in terms documentation (PR#4146)
In-Reply-To: <200309122141.h8CLfXJH018735@pubhealth.ku.dk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0309130751460.25290-100000@gannet.stats>

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003 ross@biostat.ucsf.edu wrote:

> These are two small items that caught my eye.
> 
> I'm looking at the R 1.7.1 2003-06-16 pdf reference manual.  There are
> several refences to terms.default (e.g., p. 711, 712) but no definitions
> of it.  I'm guessing this means terms, but it's a little puzzling.

No, it means the default method of the terms generic. Try ?terms.default, 
which gives you a complete explanation.

Page numbers are useless to us, BTW, as they depend on the papersize and
I suspect you are not using ISO sizes.

> Also, the desription of terms.object  does not mention that the
> "variables" attribute is actually a list of calls--surprising to me,

It isn't.  It is a single call to list.

> since I was expecting text like all.vars.

But, it says it is a `list'.  Wrong, but not character (if that is what 
you meant by `text').

>   It would be useful to
> indicate if all.vars returns the same ordering as the variables
> attribute (at least, I'm wondering it now, though this might be a sign
> I've gone astray).

What has all.vars to do with terms?  All.vars applies to an expression or 
call, and terms() applies to a formula or a model object.

-- 
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] glitch in terms documentation (PR#4146)
Prof Brian Ripley