Martin Maechler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> RichOK> "from", "to", "by", "length.out", "along.with" > RichOK> ^^^^ ^^^^^ > RichOK> when the help page for seq documents them as > RichOK> "from", "to", "by", "length", and "along"? > > > Well I can explain why this wasn't caught by R's builtin > QA (quality assurance) checks: > > The base/man/seq.Rd page uses both \synopsis{} and \usage{} > which allows to put things on the help page that are not checked > to coincide with the code... > I'm about to fix this (documentation, not code). In the case of "length", I think there's a historical explanation for having the formal argument being a slightly lengthened version of what you'd like to use as the actual argument: "length" is the obvious choice of name for the argument, but if you used that in older versions of S and R then it would mask the length() function and get you in all sorts of trouble, or at least spit out a number of annoying warning messages. (On a related note, you may have noticed that some of the oldtimers still have knee-jerk reactions to people using "c" and "t" for variable names). So call it something longer and let partial matching allow users to use the short form. With namespaces, base::length(v) would clear up the issue quite nicely, as would the convention of looking for objects of mode "function" if it is clear from the context that a function is needed. However, seq() predates both of these features as far as I remember. -- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3 c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) FAX: (+45) 35327907 ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel