Hello R devel/help, I ran into this strange behavior:
# showstack is supposed to walk through the stack of parent # environments when it is called: showstack = function() { env = environment() for(i in 1:12) { env = do.call(parent.frame, list(), env=env) print(env) } } # a simple chain of functions: g3=function(t) showstack() g2=function(w) g3(w) g1=function(z) g2(z) g=function(y) g1(y) g() # outputs: # <environment: 0xb5ef810> # <environment: 0xb5ef6f8> # <environment: 0xb5ef5e0> # <environment: 0xb5ef4c8> # <environment: R_GlobalEnv> # <environment: R_GlobalEnv> # <environment: R_GlobalEnv> # <environment: R_GlobalEnv> # <environment: R_GlobalEnv> # ... cat(capture.output(g()),sep="\n") # outputs: # <environment: 0x8106a30> # <environment: 0x8106918> # <environment: 0x8106800> # <environment: 0x81066e8> # <environment: R_GlobalEnv> # <environment: 0x8107458> # <environment: 0x81071b8> # <environment: 0x80c6a08> # <environment: R_GlobalEnv> # <environment: 0x8107458> # <environment: 0x81071b8> # <environment: 0x80c6a08> The strange thing of course is that the second call doesn't stay with R_GlobalEnv, but in fact goes into a loop of period 4. I'm not so surprised that the parent frame of the global environment is itself, as in the first call, but it seems weird to have a loop of period 4... Using `ls()` shows that two of the "loop" environments belong to capture.output() and eval(). But if capture.output is really evaluating its input in the parent frame, as it appears to be doing from its source code, then I would have expected the output to be the same as the output I get by evaluating the same expression in this frame. I was trying to debug a function which attempts to be a multi-frame version of deparse(substitute(...)). I'm attaching this function in case anyone is curious. Perhaps my attachment can shed more light on the problem I'm having. Apologies if this is not a bug - I wasn't sure which mailing list to send this to, and I took a guess. Thanks, Frederick
desubN <- function(y,n=1) { env=environment(); for(i in 1:n) { y = do.call(substitute, list(substitute(y)), env=env) env = do.call(parent.frame, list(), env=env) } deparse(y) } g2=function(t) { for(i in 1:5) { print(desubN(t,i)) print(capture.output(desubN(t,i))) } } g1=function(z) g2(z) g=function(y) g1(y) g(log) # output: (why does it stop at "z"?) ## [1] "t" ## [1] "[1] \"t\"" ## [1] "z" ## [1] "[1] \"z\"" ## [1] "y" ## [1] "[1] \"z\"" ## [1] "log" ## [1] "[1] \"z\"" ## [1] "log" ## [1] "[1] \"z\""
______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.