> Presumably if I ask for p$a or p$b later, it's because I'm interesting > in the value of "p$a" or "p$b" that I specifically put inside that > environment. Otherwise I would just ask for "a" or "b". If I'm > asking for "p$b" it the above case, that means I forgot to declare b > inside p. In this case there should be an error telling me that, not > a silent substitution of the wrong quantity. > > If someone wanted to do the y$ls() thing, they could always > >> y <- proto(a=1) >> with(y, ls()) > [1] "a" > > Another reason is that there are plenty of other programming languages > that have similar structures and this behavior is very odd. In > standard languages asking for "b" inside the "p" object gives you an > error, and no one complains.
You might want to have a look at the mutatr package which implements prototype OO with the behaviour you're looking for (I think). I also have a paper available if you email me off list. Hadley -- Assistant Professor / Dobelman Family Junior Chair Department of Statistics / Rice University http://had.co.nz/ ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
