R help - Jan 2011 - function masking and gmp questions

Hi,
Here's the problem I ran into:  the gmp package has a method for apply() 
so it masks the base::apply function.  With gmp installed, I tried to 
run the function turnpoints() from the pastecs package.  It fails 
because it calls apply() internally, like this:

apply(mymatrix,1,max,na.rm=TRUE)
,
but the code in the gmp package which sets up the operator overload for 
apply()  strictly limits the arguments to the first three (a matrix, a 
dimension, and a function).   I get, no surprise:

Rgames> xs<-sin(seq(1,100)/10)
Rgames> turnpoints(xs)
Error in apply(ex, 1, max, na.rm = TRUE) :
   unused argument(s) (na.rm = TRUE)

I'm assuming this is a bug in gmp code and will ask the owner of that 
package about it.

But in the meantime, is there some way to force a function to search for 
functions in a different namespace, or at least to search with packages 
set in a different order?  That is, in this example, to make 
turnpoints() look to package base before looking at gmp?

Thanks for your help and corrections to any of my assumptions and 
conclusions here.


Carl

On Jan 3, 2011, at 7:17 PM, Carl Witthoft wrote:
> Hi,
> Here's the problem I ran into:  the gmp package has a method for  
> apply() so it masks the base::apply function.  With gmp installed, I  
> tried to run the function turnpoints() from the pastecs package.  It  
> fails because it calls apply() internally, like this:
>
> apply(mymatrix,1,max,na.rm=TRUE)
> ,
> but the code in the gmp package which sets up the operator overload  
> for apply()  strictly limits the arguments to the first three (a  
> matrix, a dimension, and a function).   I get, no surprise:
>
> Rgames> xs<-sin(seq(1,100)/10)
> Rgames> turnpoints(xs)
> Error in apply(ex, 1, max, na.rm = TRUE) :
>  unused argument(s) (na.rm = TRUE)
>
> I'm assuming this is a bug in gmp code and will ask the owner of  
> that package about it.
>
> But in the meantime, is there some way to force a function to search  
> for functions in a different namespace, or at least to search with  
> packages set in a different order?  That is, in this example, to  
> make turnpoints() look to package base before looking at gmp?
In general the strategy is to use the "::" operator. Try :

base::apply(mymatrix,1,max,na.rm=TRUE)

(Untested in absence of example.)
>
> Thanks for your help and corrections to any of my assumptions and  
> conclusions here.
>
-- 

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT