John Fox: (12:15PM on Fri, Sep 13)
[...cut...]
I think that most users --
as opposed to R developers -- will find the package::function( ... ) syntax
in examples not so much ugly as cryptic. I think that we have ample recent
evidence on this list that even developers (I don't exempt myself) are
confused by namespace issues. On balance, I prefer
if (require(MASS)) {
loglm( ...)
}
which tells the user that it's necessary to load MASS before using loglm().
It would be nice if examples ran in a "sandbox," so that an example could
read something like
library(MASS)
loglm( ... )
. . .
without affecting the path in the current session, and fail gracefully if
the MASS package weren't available (unlikely, of course, in the case of
MASS, but not more generally).
Does assigning
loglm <- MASS::loglm
loglm( ... )
not work in examples anymore? (with MASS listed under 'Suggests'.)
That seems like it could address both concerns, but it would mask
loglm if it were already defined.
--
Gray Calhoun, Assistant Professor of Economics at Iowa State
http://gray.clhn.co // (515) 294-6271 // 467 Heady Hall
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