R devel - Oct 2004 - library.dynam() & .dynLibs() do not work as documented (PR#7304)

nor in any sensible way we could document.

In R 2.0.0 (and current R-patched and R-devel):
> X11()
> library.dynam()
                                                Filename Dynamic.Lookup
base                                                base          FALSE
stats       /usr/local/lib/R/library/stats/libs/stats.so           TRUE
methods /usr/local/lib/R/library/methods/libs/methods.so           TRUE
R_X11                  /usr/local/lib/R/modules/R_X11.so           TRUE

whereas 1.9.1 gives
> library.dynam()
[1] "stats"   "methods"

and the documentation says

     If 'chname' is not specified, 'library.dynam' returns a
character
     vector with the names of packages which have used it in the
     current R session to load shared libraries. This vector is
     returned as 'invisible', unless  the 'chname' argument is
missing.

which is clearly no longer true.  I don't see why we want loaded modules 
in there that have nothing to do with packages, or even non-modules.

At that point .dynLibs() gave

$base
DLL name: base
Filename: base
Dynamic lookup: FALSE

$stats
DLL name: stats
Filename: /usr/local/lib/R/library/stats/libs/stats.so
Dynamic lookup: TRUE

[[3]]
[1] "methods"

which seems useless for

     '.dynLibs' is used for getting or setting the packages that have
     loaded shared libraries (using 'library.dynam').

One command later and we have
> library(MASS)
> .dynLibs()
$base
DLL name: base
Filename: base
Dynamic lookup: FALSE

$stats
DLL name: stats
Filename: /usr/local/lib/R/library/stats/libs/stats.so
Dynamic lookup: TRUE

$methods
DLL name: methods
Filename: /usr/local/lib/R/library/methods/libs/methods.so
Dynamic lookup: TRUE

$R_X11
DLL name: R_X11
Filename: /usr/local/lib/R/modules/R_X11.so
Dynamic lookup: TRUE

[[5]]
[1] "MASS"

!

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@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