[R] Definition of "wrapper"?

[Gabor Grothendieck]

The wrapper wraps, i.e. calls, another function that does the real
work but provides a different or more convenient (or more convenient
for a specific purpose) interface to it or specific syntax.  Often the wrapper
has the same arguments but different defaults and sometimes that
is referred to as a "convenience" wrapper.  Sometimes its used in
the sense of providing an R interface to a C function with essentially
similar arguments.

by is a wrapper to tapply which preprocesses the data in a way
that makes it acceptable to tapply, read.csv and Map are wrappers
to read.table and mapply which are the same but have different argument
defaults, sprintf is a wrapper to the C function of the same name,
%o% is a wrapper to outer.

I don't think there is a formalized definition within R -- the above is
based on current usage.

On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 2:51 PM, Bryan Hanson <hanson at depauw.edu> wrote:
> I think I more or less understand what a ³wrapper² is, but I¹d like to hear
> how more experienced R users define it, and especially I'd like to know if
> there is a formal definition.  In my reading, it seems like there are a
> fairly wide range of meanings, but they are all conceptually similar.
>
> I've looked in a couple of the classic R texts, the extensions and
> developers' manuals, and R help archives, and didn't find a definition.  Of
> course, I may have missed it.
>
> Thanks in advance.  Bryan
>
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