From bates at stat.wisc.edu  Thu Sep  3 18:24:57 2009
From: bates at stat.wisc.edu (Douglas Bates)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 11:24:57 -0500
Subject: [Rd] clearNames and unname
In-Reply-To: <19103.55947.28119.671358@lynne.math.ethz.ch>
References: <f8e6ff050909030616r21a29548w2181ca0bb3c8a59e@mail.gmail.com>
	<19103.53056.407750.237426@lynne.math.ethz.ch>
	<19103.55947.28119.671358@lynne.math.ethz.ch>
Message-ID: <40e66e0b0909030924t260c290dre22e0cca209bde7@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 10:02 AM, Martin
Maechler<maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
>>>>>> "MM" == Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch>
>>>>>> ? ? on Thu, 3 Sep 2009 16:14:24 +0200 writes:
>
>>>>>> "HW" == Hadley Wickham <hadley at rice.edu>
>>>>>> ? ? on Thu, 3 Sep 2009 08:16:27 -0500 writes:
>
> ? ?HW> Just noticed these two functions (clearNames is stats and unname in
> ? ?HW> base) that do the same thing.
>
> ? ?MM> clearNames looks like an accident. ?unname() has existed for
> ? ?MM> much longer {and as someone else said},
> ? ?MM> has been more general, too.
>
> Hmm, the first part in the above may be wrong:
> clearNames() has been part of the 'nls' package (before that
> was integrated into 'stats'),
> and the code of 'nls' may well have been almost as old as the
> unname() function :
> I see both in ?R 0.90.1 ?(December 15, 1999).
>
> I see only about 5 usages of clearNames() in CRAN packages, and
> none in the 300+ Bioconductor "Rpacks" ?packages.
>
> Consequently, I'm proposing to deprecate ?clearNames() {for
> unname()}.

Fine with me.  I had forgotten that we even wrote clearNames() for the
nls package.



[Rd] clearNames and unname
Douglas Bates