Doesn't this also mean that if Matrix is loaded first, det() will be calling Matrix::determinant, which could be quite surprising change in behavior from expectation?
This seems rather dangerous and 'untrustworthy' to me - unless I am missing some other hidden mechanism involved here. I haven't read the code yet, and I am sure Matrix will "do the right thing", but I have strong reservations about this behavior when applied to the general universe of R and CRAN. Jeff On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 6:03 AM, Martin Maechler <maech...@stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote: >>>>>> Matthew Dowle <mdo...@mdowle.plus.com> >>>>>> on Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:59:43 +0000 writes: > > > Hello, > > > Regarding this in R-devel/NEWS/New features : > > > o 'library(pkg)' no longer warns about a conflict with a > > function from 'package:base' if the function is an > > identical copy of the base one but with a different > > environment. > > > Why would one want an identical copy in a different > > environment? I'm thinking I may be missing out on a trick > > here. > > Yes, you are ;-) The trick is called ``namespace'' : > > One example which lead me to implement the above: > > The Matrix package has had an identical copy of 'det' for a > while now, but of course in the Matrix namespace. > Because of that, the call to determinant() inside det() will > correctly dispatch Matrix methods for determinant(), whereas > base::det() would not. > > Martin > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel -- Jeffrey Ryan jeffrey.r...@lemnica.com www.lemnica.com www.esotericR.com R/Finance 2012: Applied Finance with R www.RinFinance.com See you in Chicago!!!! ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
