If an attempt is made to attach to position 1, it appears to work (not even a warning) but in fact it doesn't work as many would expect. "search" thinks that it gets placed in position 2, but nothing is actually there (according to "ls").
This is guaranteed to be confusing (and annoying) to people who are used to attaching to position 1 in S-PLUS.
I'm not clear on all of the implications of changing this, but my first inclination would be to make it an error to attach to position 1. The help file says that you can't do it.
At the very least there should be a warning . My guess is that it is rare for someone to attach to position 1 and not attempt to modify what is being attached.
> attach('foo.RData')
> search()
[1] ".GlobalEnv" "file:foo.RData" "package:methods" [4] "package:stats" "package:graphics" "package:grDevices"
[7] "package:utils" "package:datasets" "Autoloads" [10] "package:base" > ls(2)
[1] "jj"
> jj
[1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
> detach()
> search()
[1] ".GlobalEnv" "package:methods" "package:stats" [4] "package:graphics" "package:grDevices" "package:utils" [7] "package:datasets" "Autoloads" "package:base" > attach('foo.RData', pos=1)
> search()
[1] ".GlobalEnv" "file:foo.RData" "package:methods" [4] "package:stats" "package:graphics" "package:grDevices"
[7] "package:utils" "package:datasets" "Autoloads" [10] "package:base" > ls(2)
character(0)
_ platform i386-pc-mingw32 arch i386 os mingw32 system i386, mingw32 status Under development (unstable)
major 2 minor 0.0 year 2004 month 09 day 17 language R
Pat
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