[R] question mle again

Prof Brian Ripley ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Mon Feb 7 19:19:43 CET 2011


Because, as that help page makes clear, the 'parent environment' is 
easily confused with the 'parent frame', we tend not to use the 
former.

So the main answer to

> when/how is the the parent environment distinct from the enclosing 
> environment?

is 'when the writer meant the parent frame'.

On Mon, 7 Feb 2011, Joshua Wiley wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 9:40 AM, Bert Gunter <gunter.berton at gene.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 9:21 AM, Joshua Wiley <jwiley.psych at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> When a function cannot find a variable inside its own environment, it
>>> will look to its parent environment.
>>
>>
>> This is false. It will "look to" its **enclosing environment" /
>> "enclosure" . See
>> ?environment
>
> Thank you for the correction, Bert.  I had always interpreted:
>
> "If one follows the 'parent.env()' chain of enclosures back far
> enough from any environment, eventually one reaches the empty
> environment."
>
> to mean the parent environment was basically synonymous with the
> enclosure.  I re-read ?environment, but I think I am still missing
> something, so if I may ask a follow up question, would you explain or
> suggest additional places to look for when/how is the the parent
> environment distinct from the enclosing environment?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Josh
>>
>> (Note: This is fundamental to R scoping)
>>
>> -- Bert
>>
>> --
>> Bert Gunter
>> Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595



More information about the R-help mailing list