On Wed, 6 Feb 2013, MacQueen, Don wrote:
My sense is that even if this were possible (which I doubt),
Don, It is possible.
... it would be outside the scope of what would be considered appropriate in R (assuming I understand the question). After all, it's someone else's package, theirs to control and maintain, etc. What if it's an installation of R on a multi-user platform, and other users might use the same package but not want the modified data?
The data are in the public domain. You can get the ITIS taxonomic database from the USGS; this table is a data frame version of that database used by the bio.infer package to associate taxa with environmental conditions. Last year the ITIS database administrator (DBA) sent me the MySQL version which I converted to PostgreSQL and provided him with a copy as well as having one for my own use. Linux is inherently a multi-user/multi-tasking OS; always has been, always will be. So are all UNIX derivatives. If another user does not want to get the full taxonomic description of that particular fly, he/she is welcome to ignore it along with all the other taxa he/she is not referencing. The taxon to be added is one found during the US EPA's EMAP-West (Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program for the 14 western states), also public domain data. Lester Yuan, the bio.infer package developer and I have been communicating about soft spots and modifications. Rich ______________________________________________ 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.
