From sfalcon at fhcrc.org  Wed Jul 11 15:40:23 2007
From: sfalcon at fhcrc.org (Seth Falcon)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 06:40:23 -0700
Subject: [Rd] Getting param names of primitives
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0707111314380.5891@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk> (Brian
	Ripley's message of "Wed, 11 Jul 2007 13:17:16 +0100 (BST)")
References: <d35b9da60707102141q60586e66w88a4b991595edcd0@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.LNX.4.64.0707110546480.27029@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
	<18068.45289.14125.872148@stat.math.ethz.ch>
	<Pine.LNX.4.64.0707111314380.5891@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <m2fy3v6ou0.fsf@ziti.fhcrc.org>

Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> writes:

> My problem is that if we make formals() work on primitives, people will 
> expect
>
> formals(log) <- value
>
> to work, and it cannot.

But it could give an informative error message.  Asking for formals()
seems to make sense so making it work seems like a good idea.  I'll
agree that it working might encourage someone to try formals<-(), but
the fact that it cannot do anything but error seems like a strange
reason not to make formals() work.

+ seth

-- 
Seth Falcon | Computational Biology | Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
http://bioconductor.org



[Rd] Getting param names of primitives
Seth Falcon