I believe you can
ex3 <- function() {
counts <- c(18,17,15,20,10,20,25,13,12)
outcome <- gl(3,1,9)
treatment <- gl(3,3)
stats::glm(counts ~ outcome + treatment, family = stats::poisson)
}
I think if family is character it's searching in parent.frame() rather
than package namespace.
~Michal
On Mon, Mar 9, 2026 at 12:54 PM Tim Taylor
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I appreciate there are likely many places where calling a stats function via
> `::` and without the stats package being loaded could be problematic but
> would R core have any interest in adapting functions to accommodate this
> where possible?
>
> The example I ran in to today can be seen below:
>
> ex <- function() {
> counts <- c(18,17,15,20,10,20,25,13,12)
> outcome <- gl(3,1,9)
> treatment <- gl(3,3)
> stats::glm(counts ~ outcome + treatment, family = "poisson")
> }
>
> tools::R(ex)
> #>
> #> Call: stats::glm(formula = counts ~ outcome + treatment, family =
> "poisson")
> #>
> #> Coefficients:
> #> (Intercept) outcome2 outcome3 treatment2 treatment3
> #> 3.045e+00 -4.543e-01 -2.930e-01 6.972e-16 8.237e-16
> #>
> #> Degrees of Freedom: 8 Total (i.e. Null); 4 Residual
> #> Null Deviance: 10.58
> #> Residual Deviance: 5.129 AIC: 56.76
>
> tools::R(ex, env=c("R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES=NULL"))
> #> Error: error in inferior call:
> #> object 'poisson' of mode 'function' was not found
>
> The second call fails due to the following line in glm:
>
> if (is.character(family))
> family <- get(family, mode = "function", envir = parent.frame())
>
> A non-breaking patch (AFAICT) could add an additional branch that explicitly
> searches a lookup of functions in the stats package if the above call to
> `get` failed.
>
> Again I understand this could very much be a case of, "don't do that", but ...
>
> Regards
>
> Tim
>
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