On 7/5/06, Simon Urbanek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Gabor, > > On Jul 5, 2006, at 1:16 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: > > >> It really is the way R is designed to work. Whether it is a > >> problem or not is a separate issue. Environments really are > >> references, not values, and they really work differently from the > >> way most other objects work. > > > > OK. Its not a bug but as we discuss this it seems to me that its > > current operation is undesirable > > We discuss it only because *you* think it's undesirable... > > > > since environments don't seem to fit into the scheme that other > > objects do yet different design/implement would allow this to occur. > > > > Environments are different *on purpose*, what environments do cannot > be achieved using any other 'standard' object. And it's exactly > environment's behavior on assign that makes it useful, so what you > are proposing is basically making it into a list (so that it gets > copied on assign), which makes no sense. What you really want is > something other than an environment, but you insist on using an > environment - it's like insisting on using a screwdriver on a nail - > it's not the screwdriver's fault that it doesn't work ... > > .. and since you pounding on OO - environments are the closest you > can get to an object semantics as implemented in the most popular OO > languages, so I wonder why you aren't arguing to make all objects > into references ;). > > Cheers, > Simon > >
I don't think ad hominem arguments and unsupported statements that things "make no sense" or analogies to screwdrivers have any relevance to this discussion. I think by this time I have shown that subclassing of environments does not work yet it could if it were designed differently and furthermore there are significant problems with the workarounds. ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
