Tim Hesterberg
2008-Sep-09 01:37 UTC
[R] make methods work in lapply - remove lapply's environment
I've defined my own version of summary.default, that gives a better summary for highly skewed vectors. If I call summary(x) the method is used. If I call summary(data.frame(x)) the method is not used. I've traced this to lapply; this uses the new method: lapply(list(x), function(x) summary(x)) and this does not: lapply(list(x), summary) If I make a copy of lapply, WITHOUT the environment, then the method is used. lapply <- function (X, FUN, ...) { FUN <- match.fun(FUN) if (!is.vector(X) || is.object(X)) X <- as.list(X) .Internal(lapply(X, FUN)) } I'm curious to hear reactions to this. There is a March 2006 thread object size vs. file size in which Duncan Murdoch wrote:> Functions in R consist of 3 parts: the formals, the body, and the > environment. You can't remove any part, but you can change it.That is exactly what I want to do, remove the environment, so that when I define a better version of some function that the better version is used. Here's a function to automate the process: copyFunction <- function(Name){ # Copy a function, without its environment. # Name should be quoted # Return the copy file <- tempfile() on.exit(unlink(file)) dput(get(Name), file = file) f <- source(file)$value f } lapply <- copyFunction("lapply") [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
Duncan Murdoch
2008-Sep-09 02:09 UTC
[R] make methods work in lapply - remove lapply's environment
On 08/09/2008 9:37 PM, Tim Hesterberg wrote:> I've defined my own version of summary.default, > that gives a better summary for highly skewed vectors. > > If I call > summary(x) > the method is used. > > If I call > summary(data.frame(x)) > the method is not used. > > I've traced this to lapply; this uses the new method: > lapply(list(x), function(x) summary(x)) > and this does not: > lapply(list(x), summary) > > If I make a copy of lapply, WITHOUT the environment, > then the method is used. > > lapply <- function (X, FUN, ...) { > FUN <- match.fun(FUN) > if (!is.vector(X) || is.object(X)) > X <- as.list(X) > .Internal(lapply(X, FUN)) > } > > I'm curious to hear reactions to this. > There is a March 2006 thread > object size vs. file size > in which Duncan Murdoch wrote: >> Functions in R consist of 3 parts: the formals, the body, and the >> environment. You can't remove any part, but you can change it. > That is exactly what I want to do, remove the environment, so that > when I define a better version of some function that the better > version is used.But that's not removing the environment, that's changing it. Your function has globalenv() as its environment.> > Here's a function to automate the process: > copyFunction <- function(Name){ > # Copy a function, without its environment. > # Name should be quoted > # Return the copy > file <- tempfile() > on.exit(unlink(file)) > dput(get(Name), file = file) > f <- source(file)$value > f > } > lapply <- copyFunction("lapply") >A shorter version is copyFunction <- function(fn){ environment(fn) <- globalenv() fn } (which doesn't require quoting the function name). But getting back to your original question: the real problem is with S3 method dispatch and its interaction with lapply. In the bad case, lapply calls the generic, which calls the dataframe method, which calls methods (probably via the generic again, but I didn't look) for each of the columns. This is an ambiguous case: should the dataframe method act the way its author expected, and call the standard method, or should it follow the search order you want? I'd tend to think authors of functions should be able to depend on their behaviour not changing based on what's happening in the global environment. That's not an absolute rule: you should be able to define a new class and a method for it and have things work, but I don't think the fact that you have a summary.default should affect functions in namespaces that were written for the standard summary.default. Duncan Murdoch
Prof Brian Ripley
2008-Sep-09 07:06 UTC
[R] make methods work in lapply - remove lapply's environment
This is a side-effect of lapply being in the base namespace and not evaluating its arguments, as explained on its help page which also points out that using a wrapper is sometimes needed. It also points out that code has been written that relies on the current behaviour. On Mon, 8 Sep 2008, Tim Hesterberg wrote:> I've defined my own version of summary.default, > that gives a better summary for highly skewed vectors. > > If I call > summary(x) > the method is used. > > If I call > summary(data.frame(x)) > the method is not used. > > I've traced this to lapply; this uses the new method: > lapply(list(x), function(x) summary(x)) > and this does not: > lapply(list(x), summary) > > If I make a copy of lapply, WITHOUT the environment, > then the method is used. > > lapply <- function (X, FUN, ...) { > FUN <- match.fun(FUN) > if (!is.vector(X) || is.object(X)) > X <- as.list(X) > .Internal(lapply(X, FUN)) > } > > I'm curious to hear reactions to this. > There is a March 2006 thread > object size vs. file size > in which Duncan Murdoch wrote: >> Functions in R consist of 3 parts: the formals, the body, and the >> environment. You can't remove any part, but you can change it. > That is exactly what I want to do, remove the environment, so that > when I define a better version of some function that the better > version is used. > > Here's a function to automate the process: > copyFunction <- function(Name){ > # Copy a function, without its environment. > # Name should be quoted > # Return the copy > file <- tempfile() > on.exit(unlink(file)) > dput(get(Name), file = file) > f <- source(file)$value > f > } > lapply <- copyFunction("lapply") > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >-- 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