One possibility is: f <- function(a, b, x) if (missing(x)) a+b else a-b-x
although that does have the disadvantage that one cannot explicitly tell it not to use x but rather its denoted by its absence. On 11/19/06, Tamas K Papp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I am writing a collection of functions which I plan to share as a > package later (when they are tested thoroughly), so I would like to do > things "right" from the beginning... > > I encountered a minor question of style. Consider a function > > f <- function(a,b,x=NULL) { > ## ... > } > > if !is.null(x), f will use x to calculate the result, but if > is.null(x), it will do something else not involving x at all (using > any x would be meaningless here, so I can't use > x=calcsomethingfrom(a,b)). > > What's the accepted way of indicating this in R with a default for x? > x=FALSE? x=NA? x=NULL? > > Thanks, > > Tamas > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel