R devel - Dec 2006 - apropos changes in r-devel: intended feature or bug?

The old apropos started with:

    if (!is.character(what))
        what <- as.character(substitute(what))

The new one has:

   if (character.only)
        stopifnot(is.character(what))
    else what <- as.character(substitute(what))

i.e., the check for is.character(what) is missing. This has the effect
that 'what' can no longer be a character string generated by a
function call unless 'character.only = TRUE'. I don't think this was
intended; the change makes previously valid use invalid and I can't
think of a situation where it is useful.

-Deepayan

> apropos(paste("^", "lm", sep = ""))
[1] "paste"
There were 12 warnings (use warnings() to see them)
> warnings()
Warning messages:
1: the condition has length > 1 and only the first element will be
used in: if (is.na(pattern)) {  ...
2: the condition has length > 1 and only the first element will be
used in: if (is.na(pattern)) {  ...
3: the condition has length > 1 and only the first element will be
used in: if (is.na(pattern)) {  ...
...
> sessionInfo()
R version 2.5.0 Under development (unstable) (2006-12-21 r40280)
powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu

locale:
LC_CTYPE=bn_IN.UTF-8;[etc etc]

attached base packages:
[1] "stats"     "graphics"  "grDevices"
"utils"     "datasets"  "methods"
[7] "base"

>>>>> "DeepS" == Deepayan Sarkar <deepayan.sarkar at
gmail.com>
>>>>>     on Thu, 21 Dec 2006 22:07:27 -0800 writes:
    DeepS> The old apropos started with: if
    DeepS> (!is.character(what)) what <-
    DeepS> as.character(substitute(what))

    DeepS> The new one has:

    DeepS>    if (character.only) stopifnot(is.character(what))
    DeepS>    else what <- as.character(substitute(what))

    DeepS> i.e., the check for is.character(what) is
    DeepS> missing. This has the effect that 'what' can no
    DeepS> longer be a character string generated by a function
    DeepS> call unless 'character.only = TRUE'. I don't think
    DeepS> this was intended; the change makes previously valid
    DeepS> use invalid and I can't think of a situation where it
    DeepS> is useful.

[ Did you read the corresponding NEWS entry? ]

It now parallelizes the use in library() , require() etc,
and in particular does what the documentation says it does!

The old behavior was much less consistent and not according to
documentation:

     apropos(lm)    was equivalent to apropos("lm")
but  apropos(fit)   gave an error.

Martin

    DeepS> -Deepayan