Tony, I don't understand what you mean. Could you give an example? > -----Original Message----- > From: Tony Plate [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ... I'm not saying "never write functions that use ...", > >I'm just saying "never write functions that depend on a particular > >argument being passed via ...". > > Several reasons for not following that principle involve proliferation > of > defaults -- if the lower level functions have defaults, then those > defaults > must be repeated at the higher levels. > This is a good reason for not > following that principle, because it makes software maintenance more > difficult.
I don't think I agree with that (though maybe I just didn't get it). I prefer to know what arguments a function is going to use. > Another reason for not following that principle is that tf > you > have several lower level functions with different default > values for an > argument of the same name, it becomes impossible to get the > lower-level > default behavior. I'm lost there. When I choose which function to call it has its own default?? I often call a function of mine called timepoints.summary for which I want to pass graphical parameters to boxplots, matplots and confidence interval plots. So I name the arguments cex.boxplot, col.boxplot etc and then within the function I call boxplot(x, cex=boxplot.cex) and so on. I wouldn't expect a single argument "cex" to magically work out whether it was being used in a boxplot or matplot and change to a different default?? Simon Fear Senior Statistician Syne qua non Ltd Tel: +44 (0) 1379 644449 Fax: +44 (0) 1379 644445 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.synequanon.com Number of attachments included with this message: 0 This message (and any associated files) is confidential and\...{{dropped}} ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help