R devel - Apr 2007 - args / formals on primitives

On SVN revision 41087:

?args has this example line:

args(c)            # -> NULL (c is a 'primitive' function)

The comment seems out of date, as args(c) does in fact have a non-NULL return 
value:

args(c)
# function (..., recursive = FALSE) 
# NULL

While at it, I was wondering, why

formals(c)

still returns NULL, in contrast.

Regards
Thomas Friedrichsmeier
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On Mon, 16 Apr 2007, Thomas Friedrichsmeier wrote:
> On SVN revision 41087:
which is over 100 old.

Now we are in code freeze, the pace of change should reduce considerably 
(although people will continue to work in R-devel)
> ?args has this example line:
>
> args(c)            # -> NULL (c is a 'primitive' function)
>
> The comment seems out of date, as args(c) does in fact have a non-NULL
return
> value:
>
> args(c)
> # function (..., recursive = FALSE)
> # NULL
That has been fixed once but the fix seems to have got lost, so I have put 
in back.
> While at it, I was wondering, why
>
> formals(c)
>
> still returns NULL, in contrast.
Because only closures have formals, the way things are defined.  This 
makes sense to me as formals<-() cannot work on primitives.

-- 
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