R devel - Jan 2010 - Missing argument error message

Back in the days of R 2.6, if you did this, you got this:
> z=function(x){x*2}
> z()
Error in z() : argument "x" is missing, with no default

 But now in this decade we get (for R 2.9 and 2.10):
> z=function(x){x*2}
> z()
Error in z() :
  element 1 is empty;
   the part of the args list of '*' being evaluated was:
   (x, 2)

Now I can see (after thinking about it) that what is happening is that
because of lazy evaluation or something the 'x' isn't getting
spotted
as being empty until R tries to do x*2, which obviously maps to *(x,2)
in functional form. It's perfectly correct to say element 1 of the
args list of '*', being (x,2), is empty.

But which of those two errors above is clearer? I don't suppose much
can be done about this since it is going to the guts of modern R, and
I was surprised my initial searches didn't find hordes of confused
newbies. Just me then. It got me when I was doing a histogram of some
dates:
> hist(cases)
Error in inherits(breaks, "POSIXt") :
  element 1 is empty;
   the part of the args list of '.Internal' being evaluated was:
   (x, what, which)

 who what which? If the error had been "Error in hist(cases): argument
'breaks' is missing, with no default" you wouldn't be wasting
your
time reading this now...

Barry

-- 
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web: http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/~rowlings
web: http://www.rowlingson.com/
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Thanks for pointing this out Barry. I wonder what led to that change and if
there is a way to revert back to the old style. 

I suspect the reason you didn't find hordes of confused newbies is that
newbies don't read error messages.

-----
Hrishi Mittal
hrishimittal at gmail.com

Try  http://prettygraph.com Pretty Graph , the easiest way to make R-powered
graphs on the web.
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But in 2.10.1 patched
> z=function(x){x*2}
> z()
Error in x * 2 : 'x' is missing

[See the posting guide about checking current versions before posting 
...  My notes say the change was in 2.8.0 and a side effect of 
something else rather than deliberate.]

On Thu, 28 Jan 2010, Barry Rowlingson wrote:
> Back in the days of R 2.6, if you did this, you got this:
>
>> z=function(x){x*2}
>> z()
> Error in z() : argument "x" is missing, with no default
>
> But now in this decade we get (for R 2.9 and 2.10):
>
>> z=function(x){x*2}
>> z()
> Error in z() :
>  element 1 is empty;
>   the part of the args list of '*' being evaluated was:
>   (x, 2)
>
> Now I can see (after thinking about it) that what is happening is that
> because of lazy evaluation or something the 'x' isn't getting
spotted
> as being empty until R tries to do x*2, which obviously maps to *(x,2)
> in functional form. It's perfectly correct to say element 1 of the
> args list of '*', being (x,2), is empty.
>
> But which of those two errors above is clearer? I don't suppose much
> can be done about this since it is going to the guts of modern R, and
> I was surprised my initial searches didn't find hordes of confused
> newbies. Just me then. It got me when I was doing a histogram of some
> dates:
>
>> hist(cases)
> Error in inherits(breaks, "POSIXt") :
>  element 1 is empty;
>   the part of the args list of '.Internal' being evaluated was:
>   (x, what, which)
>
> who what which? If the error had been "Error in hist(cases): argument
> 'breaks' is missing, with no default" you wouldn't be
wasting your
> time reading this now...
>
> Barry
>
> --
> blog: http://geospaced.blogspot.com/
> web: http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/~rowlings
> web: http://www.rowlingson.com/
> twitter: http://twitter.com/geospacedman
> pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/spacedman
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
-- 
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