The partial matching is fairly deeply built in to complex assignment,
another example being
> x<-list(ab=1:2)
> names(x$ab)=c("A","B")
> names(x$a)=c("a","b")
> x
$ab
A B
1 2
$a
a b
1 2
because as evalseq works through the nested calls on the LHS the code
being called doesn't know it is in an assignment call.
The bug is a bug. It isn't specific to data frames or to replacing only
some elements of a vector
> x<-list(ab=1:2)
> x$a[]<-2:1
> x
$ab
[1] 2 1
$a
[1] 2 1
It also happens when $ is replaced by [[. It looks like a failure to
duplicate. A workaround would be not to modify list elements or database
columns that don't exist ;).
-thomas
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