>> Its useful for being able to set defaults for arguments that do not >> have defaults. That cannot break existing programs. > > Until the next program decides do co change those defaults and either > can't or does and you end up with incompatible assumptions. It also > make the code with the added defaults inconsistent with the > documentation though, which is not a good idea. It may seem > convenient but it isn't a good idea in production code that is > intended to play well with other production code.
I like the name the ruby community has for these sort of changes: monkey patching. It's an evocative term! Hadley -- Assistant Professor / Dobelman Family Junior Chair Department of Statistics / Rice University http://had.co.nz/ ______________________________________________ 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.
