R help - Apr 2012 - recover lost global function

Since R has the same namespace for functions and
variables,
> c <- 1
kills the global function, which can be restored by
> c <- get("c",mode="function")
Is there a way to prevent R from overriding globals
or at least warning when I do that
or at least warning when I replace a functional value with non-functional?

thanks.

-- 
Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric) X 11.0.11004000
http://www.childpsy.net/ http://iris.org.il http://camera.org http://ffii.org
http://dhimmi.com http://mideasttruth.com http://pmw.org.il
Garbage In, Gospel Out

On 12-04-04 4:52 PM, Sam Steingold wrote:
> Since R has the same namespace for functions and variables,
>> c<- 1
> kills the global function, which can be restored by
>> c<- get("c",mode="function")
>
> Is there a way to prevent R from overriding globals
> or at least warning when I do that
> or at least warning when I replace a functional value with non-functional?
It doesn't kill it, it just hides it.  You can still get the original by 
telling R which one you want, e.g. base::c.

You'll get a warning when you do this in a package, e.g. library(Hmisc) 
will tell you that it has hidden 5 functions from view.

There's no warning when you mask a function with a non-function at top 
level, and little need for one, because R does the right search based on 
the fact that you're making a function call:

 > c
[1] 1
 > c(1,2)
[1] 1 2

It only matters when you need to pass the function as an argument, e.g. 
to one of the apply() family of functions.

Duncan Murdoch

To expand on Duncan's answer, you haven't replaced it. The following
should make that clear:

## starting in a fresh session
> c
function (..., recursive = FALSE) 
.Primitive("c")
> find('c')
[1] "package:base"
> c <- 1
> find('c')
[1] ".GlobalEnv"   "package:base"
> c
[1] 1
> rm(c)
> find('c')
[1] "package:base"
> c
function (..., recursive = FALSE)  .Primitive("c")

The one provided by R, and the one you created, are not in the same
namespace.
To "recover" R's version, get rid of the one you created.Also,
take a look
at the search() and conflicts() functions.

-Don


-- 
Don MacQueen

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
7000 East Ave., L-627
Livermore, CA 94550
925-423-1062





On 4/4/12 1:52 PM, "Sam Steingold" <sds at gnu.org> wrote:
>Since R has the same namespace for functions and variables,
>> c <- 1
>kills the global function, which can be restored by
>> c <- get("c",mode="function")
>
>Is there a way to prevent R from overriding globals
>or at least warning when I do that
>or at least warning when I replace a functional value with non-functional?
>
>thanks.
>
>-- 
>Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric) X
>11.0.11004000
>http://www.childpsy.net/ http://iris.org.il http://camera.org
>http://ffii.org
>http://dhimmi.com http://mideasttruth.com http://pmw.org.il
>Garbage In, Gospel Out
>
>______________________________________________
>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.