R-beta: dataframes and functions

[Martyn Plummer]

On 18-Feb-98 Jim Lindsey wrote:
>As I guessed, globality of dataframes in functions is another one of
>those wonderful S-Plus features. Is there any advantage  to this???

Well, I'm not going to argue the logic of it with you, but S compatibility
is usually regarded as a feature rather than a bug. It might conceivably
be useful for different functions to manipulate variables in the same
data frame without passing the data frame as an argument, but I don't
have a strong opinion.

>  Note that an undetached dataframe `disappears' when the function
>exits. But the invisible variables it contained do not. I had about 30
>invisible copies of the variables that ls() could not see. But one
>called factor kept giving a warning message (outside the original
>function) so I knew something fishy was going on. What possibly could
>be the advantage of such behaviour?

I can't duplicate the behaviour your are describing. Perhaps I
have misunderstood. Could you post a simple example?

Martyn
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