[Rd] Feature request: put NewEnvironment and R_NewhashedEnv into API

Seth Falcon sfalcon at fhcrc.org
Wed Nov 15 16:32:54 CET 2006


Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> writes:
> NewEnvironment is currently exposed as Rf_NewEnvironment.
> R_NewHashedEnv is currrently hidden, but I'll unhide it.  It does not
> need a further prefix.

Thank you.  Could someone provide a bit more detail on how to
determine if a given function in R's C code is exposed and/or public
or not?

Here's my current understanding after taking a look at Brian's patch
r39907:

A function can be hidden or not, but this is independent of whether the
function is "sanctioned" as part of R's package API.  Functions that
are not hidden can be used from package C code, but that doesn't
answer whether they _should_ be used.

To determine if a function is public, look at the headers in
R/src/include and refer to the README.  Thus, NewEnvironment and
R_NewHashedEnv, are both private since they are declared in Defn.h.
At present, one could call these function in package code, since they
are not hidden.

+ seth



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