On Sat, 6 Jun 2009, Ben Bolker wrote:
>
> Is there a reason that Reduce() doesn't take a "..."
argument that
> would allow arbitrary extra arguments to be passed through to the function?
>
> Here is a little example of how this would be convenient:
>
> z <- list(
> data.frame(state=c("California"),
> cases=0),
>
data.frame(state=c("California","Massachusetts"),
> cases=c(1,2)),
>
data.frame(state=c("California","Massachusetts","Arizona"),
> cases=c(1,2,17)))
>
> ## read in revised version of Reduce()
> Reduce(merge,z,by="state",all=TRUE)
>
> The change is simple -- just add "..." to every call to the
function
> in Reduce() -- patch is included below my signature ...
>
> It's not a big deal -- I could also do
> Reduce(function(x,y) { merge(x,y,by="state",all=TRUE) }, z)
> but there doesn't seem to be a good reason not to allow it ...
I think the idiom of the languages from which this comes would indeed
to be use an anonymous function, and in R to use ... and no braces, as
in
Reduce(function(...) merge(..., by="state", all=TRUE), z)
But that's not the (ony) R idiom, so I am happy to add a ... argument
to Reduce. Unfortunately the patch below is backwards (you have diffs
from old to new in 'patch' format), and we do need to patch the
documentation (which gets a bit ugly as ... has a different meaning
for another function on the Reduce help page). I think I have sorted
these out, and will commit to R-devel shortly.
>
> cheers
> Ben Bolker
>
>
> --
> Ben Bolker
> Associate professor, Biology Dep't, Univ. of Florida
> bolker at ufl.edu / www.zoology.ufl.edu/bolker
> GPG key: www.zoology.ufl.edu/bolker/benbolker-publickey.asc
>
>
> *** /home/ben/funprog.R.new 2009-06-06 18:30:56.000000000 -0400
> --- src/library/base/R/funprog.R 2009-02-12 10:39:32.000000000 -0500
> ***************
> *** 15,21 ****
> # http://www.r-project.org/Licenses/
>
> Reduce <-
> ! function(f, x, init, right = FALSE, accumulate = FALSE, ...)
> {
> mis <- missing(init)
> len <- length(x)
> --- 15,21 ----
> # http://www.r-project.org/Licenses/
>
> Reduce <-
> ! function(f, x, init, right = FALSE, accumulate = FALSE)
> {
> mis <- missing(init)
> len <- length(x)
> ***************
> *** 47,57 ****
> if(!accumulate) {
> if(right) {
> for(i in rev(ind))
> ! init <- f(x[[i]], init, ...)
> }
> else {
> for(i in ind)
> ! init <- f(init, x[[i]], ...)
> }
> init
> }
> --- 47,57 ----
> if(!accumulate) {
> if(right) {
> for(i in rev(ind))
> ! init <- f(x[[i]], init)
> }
> else {
> for(i in ind)
> ! init <- f(init, x[[i]])
> }
> init
> }
> ***************
> *** 64,76 ****
> if(right) {
> out[[len]] <- init
> for(i in rev(ind)) {
> ! init <- f(x[[i]], init, ...)
> out[[i]] <- init
> }
> } else {
> out[[1L]] <- init
> for(i in ind) {
> ! init <- f(init, x[[i]], ...)
> out[[i]] <- init
> }
> }
> --- 64,76 ----
> if(right) {
> out[[len]] <- init
> for(i in rev(ind)) {
> ! init <- f(x[[i]], init)
> out[[i]] <- init
> }
> } else {
> out[[1L]] <- init
> for(i in ind) {
> ! init <- f(init, x[[i]])
> out[[i]] <- init
> }
> }
> ***************
> *** 78,91 ****
> if(right) {
> out[[len]] <- init
> for(i in rev(ind)) {
> ! init <- f(x[[i]], init, ...)
> out[[i]] <- init
> }
> }
> else {
> for(i in ind) {
> out[[i]] <- init
> ! init <- f(init, x[[i]], ...)
> }
> out[[len]] <- init
> }
> --- 78,91 ----
> if(right) {
> out[[len]] <- init
> for(i in rev(ind)) {
> ! init <- f(x[[i]], init)
> out[[i]] <- init
> }
> }
> else {
> for(i in ind) {
> out[[i]] <- init
> ! init <- f(init, x[[i]])
> }
> out[[len]] <- init
> }
>
>
>
--
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