R devel - Apr 2009 - actual argument matching does not conform to the definition (PR#13636)

Thomas Lumley wrote:
>
> The explanation is that quote() is a primitive function and that the
> argument matching rules do not apply to primitives.  That section of
> the R Language definition should say that primitives are excluded;  it
> is documented in ?.Primitive.
thanks.  indeed, the documentation --  the language *definition* --
should make this clear.  so this is a bug in the definition, which does
not match the implementation, which in turn is as intended (right?)

?.Primitive says:

"     The advantage of '.Primitive' over '.Internal'
functions is the
     potential efficiency of argument passing.  However, this is done
     by ignoring argument names and using positional matching of
     arguments (unless arranged differently for specific primitives
     such as 'rep'), so this is discouraged for functions of more than
     one argument.
"

what is discouraged?

vQ