similar to: Substitute / delayedAssign (was: Substitute unaware when promise objects are evaluated)

R-devel, I used the 'substitute' function to create labels for objects inside an environment, without actually evaluating the objects, as the objects might be promises. However, I was surprised to see that 'substitute' returns the expression slot of the original promise even after the promise has been forcibly evaluated. (Doesn't the promise go away after evaluation?) This

Hello, ?delayedAssign presents substitute() as a way to look at the expression in the promise. However, msg <- "old" delayedAssign("x", msg) msg <- "new!" x #- new! substitute(x) #- x (was 'msg' ?) Here, we just got 'x'... shouldn't we got 'msg'? Same result when the promise is not evaluated yet: delayedAssign("x",

The last two lines of example(delayedAssign) give this: > e <- (function(x, y = 1, z) environment())(1+2, "y", {cat(" HO! "); pi+2}) > (le <- as.list(e)) # evaluates the promises $x <promise: 0x032b31f8> $y <promise: 0x032b3230> $z <promise: 0x032b3268> which contrary to the comment appears unevaluated. Is the comment wrong or is it supposed to

I'm not sure if this is a known peculiarity or a bug, but I stumbled across what I think is very odd behavior from delayedAssign. In the below example x switches values the first two times it is evaluated. > delayedAssign("x", {x <- 2; x+3}) > x==x [1] FALSE > delayedAssign("x", {x <- 2; x+3}) > x [1] 5 > x [1] 2 The ?delayedAssign documentation says

The help files for delayedAssign and substitute both say that substitute() can be used to see the expression associated with a promise. However, I can't see how to do that. When I try the example in help file for delayedAssign I don't see substitute() extracting the promise, e.g.: > msg <- "old" > delayedAssign("x", msg) > msg <-

Hi all, The help for delayedAssign suggests that you can use substitute to access the expression associated with a promise, and the help for substitute says: "If it is a promise object, i.e., a formal argument to a function or explicitly created using ?delayedAssign()?, the expression slot of the promise replaces the symbol. But this doesn't seem to work: > a <- 1 > b <- 2

Is there a way to raise an error condition when a promise is evaluated such that is can be evaluated again? Right now strange things happen when the evaluation fails: > delayedAssign("x", if (failed) stop("you have to initialize me first!") else foo) > foo <- "I'm foo" > failed<-TRUE > x Error: you have to initialize me first! > x

After a bunch of discussion in the core group, we have decided to deprecate the delay() function (which was introduced as "experimental" in R 0.50). This is the function that duplicates in R code the delayed evaluation mechanism (the promise) that's used in evaluating function arguments. The problem with delay() was that it was handled inconsistently (e.g. sometimes you would see

A user question today has me stumped. Can you advise me, please? User wants a matrix that has some numbers, some variables, possibly even some function names. So that has to be a character matrix. Consider: > BM <- matrix("0.1", 5, 5) Use data.entry(BM) or similar to set some to more abstract values. > BM[3,1] <- "a" > BM[4,2] <- "b" >

Is there some way of displaying the expression and evaluation environment associated with a promise? I have found the following: > # first run these two commands to set up example > e <- new.env() > delayedAssign("y", x*x, assign.env = e) > # method 1. shows expression but not evaluation environment > str(as.list(e)) List of 1 $ y: promise to language x * x >

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 12:24 PM, Hadley Wickham <h.wickham at gmail.com> wrote: > If it was any other environment than the global, you could use substitute: > > e <- new.env() > delayedAssign("foo", stop("Hey!"), assign.env = e) > substitute(foo, e) > > delayedAssign("foo", stop("Hey!")) > substitute(foo) Hmm... interesting

I noticed something recently that I thought was odd: delayedAssign("x", { Sys.sleep(5); 1 }) x ## Hit Ctrl-C within the first second or 2 gives me: > delayedAssign("x", { Sys.sleep(5); 1 }) > x ## Hit Ctrl-C within the first second or two > x Error: recursive default argument reference > My only problem here is that now I'm stuck---there's no way

Hi all, The documentation for substitute currently reads: Substitution takes place by examining each component of the parse tree as follows: If it is not a bound symbol in ?env?, it is unchanged. If it is a promise object, i.e., a formal argument to a function or explicitly created using ?delayedAssign()?, the expression slot of the promise replaces the symbol. If it is an ordinary variable,

1. Is there some way to copy a promise so that the copy has the same expression in its promise as the original. In the following we y is a promise that we want to copy to z. We want z to be a promise based on the expression x since y is a promise based on the expression x. Thus the answer to the code below is desired to be z=2 but its 1, 1 and y in the next three examples so they are not the

Hi, I got an interesting programming challenge: How do you inspect an object which is assigned via delayedAssign() and that throws an error as soon as it is "touched" (=the value is evaluated)? Is it possible? MINIMAL EXAMPLE: $ R --vanilla > delayedAssign("foo", stop("Hey!")) (If you find this minimal example silly/obvious, please skip down to the real

Hi, The problem arises when I lazyLoad() the .Random.seed from a previously saved database. To simplify the process of reproducing the problem, see the example below: ## this assignment may not really make sense, but illustrates the problem delayedAssign('.Random.seed', 1L) typeof(.Random.seed) # [1] "integer" rnorm(1) # Error in rnorm(1) : # .Random.seed is not an integer

Hi, The problem arises when I lazyLoad() the .Random.seed from a previously saved database. To simplify the process of reproducing the problem, see the example below: ## this assignment may not really make sense, but illustrates the problem delayedAssign('.Random.seed', 1L) typeof(.Random.seed) # [1] "integer" rnorm(1) # Error in rnorm(1) : # .Random.seed is not an integer

The following code snippet causes R to hang. This example might be a bit contrived as I was experimenting and trying to understand promises, but uses only base R. It looks like it is looking for "not_a_variable" recursively but since it doesn't exist it goes on indefinitely. x0 <- new.env() x1 <- new.env(parent = x0) parent.env(x0) <- x1 delayedAssign("v",

Given the extremely simple package at https://github.com/jimhester/testUnload, which includes only one S3 method 'print.object' the following code produces a lazy load error from a new R session (R-devel r69801) install.packages("testUnload", repos = NULL) library("testUnload") unloadNamespace("testUnload") install.packages("testUnload", repos =

Hi all, It's possible to capture the expression associated with a promise (using substitute). Is there any way to capture the environment associated with a promise? Similarly, is there any way to tell if something is a promise without accidentally evaluating it? Thanks! Hadley -- RStudio / Rice University http://had.co.nz/