Kasper Daniel Hansen
2009-Dec-14 21:42 UTC
[Rd] dumpMethod/getMethod on methods in packages
There seems to be something wrong with dumpMethod when called on methods defined in packages (possibly with namespaces). This may be caused by a possible bug in getMethod. (see below for a full copy/paste without comments) First library(Matrix) Now compare dumpMethod("rowSums", "ngCMatrix", file = "") ## Nothing to getMethod("rowSums", "ngCMatrix") ## The method definition Further inspection suggests that it is related to the where argument to dumpMethod, the default being where = topenv(parent.frame()) which evaluates (in this usecase) to .GlobalEnv. I find it interesting to compare findMethod("rowSums", "ngCMatrix", where = .GlobalEnv) ## Finds the method in the Matrix package to getMethod("rowSums", "ngCMatrix", where = .GlobalEnv) ## Does not find anything It seems to me that getMethod is wrong when it does not find anything in the global environment. Tested in R-2.10-patched (r50736) and R-devel (r50736) dumpMethod works fine with example(dumpMethod) where a method gets defined in the global environment. My usecase was trying to dump a method from a namespace I had edited with trace(..., edit = TRUE) Kasper All 5 lines for copy and paste: library(Matrix) dumpMethod("rowSums", "ngCMatrix", file = "") getMethod("rowSums", "ngCMatrix") findMethod("rowSums", "ngCMatrix", where = .GlobalEnv) getMethod("rowSums", "ngCMatrix", where = .GlobalEnv)