On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Joshua Wiley <jwiley.ps...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 9:40 AM, Bert Gunter <gunter.ber...@gene.com> wrote: >> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 9:21 AM, Joshua Wiley <jwiley.ps...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> Hi, >>> When a function cannot find a variable inside its own environment, it >>> will look to its parent environment. >> >> >> This is false. It will "look to" its **enclosing environment" / >> "enclosure" . See >> ?environment > > Thank you for the correction, Bert. I had always interpreted: > > "If one follows the 'parent.env()' chain of enclosures back far > enough from any environment, eventually one reaches the empty > environment." > > to mean the parent environment was basically synonymous with the > enclosure. I re-read ?environment, but I think I am still missing > something, so if I may ask a follow up question, would you explain or > suggest additional places to look for when/how is the the parent > environment distinct from the enclosing environment? >
I am not so sure that there really is uniform usage here although specific people may have specific preferences. Because R uses parent.env and parent.frame functions many people use the term parent environment to refer to the what parent.env returns and parent frame to refer to what parent.frame returns and that seems reasonable usage as well. -- Statistics & Software Consulting GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc. tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com ______________________________________________ R-help@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.
