R help - Aug 2003 - collapse argument on paste

One gets a different response when abbreviating collapse= in 
paste?  In the second case, it appears to be acting as if " + " is
just
another argument to be pasted.

# expected response
> paste(c("X","Y"),1:4,sep="",collapse=" +
")
[1] "X1 + Y2 + X3 + Y4"

# different!
> paste(c("X","Y"),1:4,sep="",collaps=" +
")
[1] "X1 + " "Y2 + " "X3 + " "Y4 + "

I am using R 1.7.1 on Windows 2000.  The example is taken
from MASS 2nd ed. page 42.

Is this a bug?

The issue you identified is explained in section 3.6 Calling Conventions 
for Functions in Venables and Ripley (2002) Modern Applied Statistics in 
S, 4th ed. (Springer, p. 56):  "... specified arguments occurring after 
the ... argument on the definition must be named exactly".  Since 
"collaps" does not match exactly "collapse", it is
interpreted as one of
the "..." arguments.

hope this helps.
spencer graves

Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> One gets a different response when abbreviating collapse= in 
> paste?  In the second case, it appears to be acting as if " + "
is just
> another argument to be pasted.
> 
> # expected response
> 
>>paste(c("X","Y"),1:4,sep="",collapse="
+ ")
> 
> [1] "X1 + Y2 + X3 + Y4"
> 
> # different!
> 
>>paste(c("X","Y"),1:4,sep="",collaps="
+ ")
> 
> [1] "X1 + " "Y2 + " "X3 + " "Y4 + "
> 
> I am using R 1.7.1 on Windows 2000.  The example is taken
> from MASS 2nd ed. page 42.
> 
> Is this a bug?
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help

On Sunday 17 August 2003 12:50, Gabor Grothendieck
wrote:
> One gets a different response when abbreviating collapse= in
> paste?  In the second case, it appears to be acting as if " + "
is just
> another argument to be pasted.
You can't abbreviate the collapse argument. In general, anything after 
the ..., if any, in the argument list of a function cannot be abbreviated, 
and args(paste) says:
> args(paste)
function (..., sep = " ", collapse = NULL)

-Deepayan