R help - Sep 2011 - several functions in one *.R file in a R package

Dear list members,


i have build a package which contains a collection of my frequently used
functions. To keep the code organized I have broken down some rather extensive
and long functions into individual steps and bundled these steps in
sub-functions that are called inside the main function.

To keep an overview over which sub-function belongs to which main function I
saved all the respective sub-functions to the same *.R file as their
main-function and gave them names beginning with . to somehow hide the
sub-functions. The result would be one *.R file in <package>/R for each
'main-function' containing something like:


mainfunction <- function() {
  .subfunction1()
  .subfunction2()
  #...
}

.subfunction1() <- function() {
 #do some stuff
}
.subfunction2() <- function() {
 #do some more stuff
}


According to the way I understood the "Writing R Extensions" Manual I
expected this to work. When I load the package, however, I get the error message
that the sub-functions could not be found. Manually sourcing all files in the
<package>/R directory however yields the expected functionality.

In what way am I mistaken here? Any ideas?

Cheers
Jannis

On 11-09-06 10:26 AM, Jannis wrote:
> Dear list members,
>
>
> i have build a package which contains a collection of my frequently used
functions. To keep the code organized I have broken down some rather extensive
and long functions into individual steps and bundled these steps in
sub-functions that are called inside the main function.
>
> To keep an overview over which sub-function belongs to which main function
I saved all the respective sub-functions to the same *.R file as their
main-function and gave them names beginning with . to somehow hide the
sub-functions. The result would be one *.R file in<package>/R for each
'main-function' containing something like:
>
>
> mainfunction<- function() {
>    .subfunction1()
>    .subfunction2()
>    #...
> }
>
> .subfunction1()<- function() {
>   #do some stuff
> }
> .subfunction2()<- function() {
>   #do some more stuff
> }
>
>
> According to the way I understood the "Writing R Extensions"
Manual I expected this to work. When I load the package, however, I get the
error message that the sub-functions could not be found. Manually sourcing all
files in the<package>/R directory however yields the expected
functionality.
>
> In what way am I mistaken here? Any ideas?
Those definitions of .subfunction1 and .subfunction2 are not 
syntactically correct:  extra parens.  If that's just a typo in the 
message, then you'll have to show us real code.  What you describe 
should work.

Duncan Murdoch