NONCONFIDENTIAL // EXTERNAL The following function foo indexes the mtcars data frame by x, and I supply no default value to the argument x. When I call the function without any argument values, I surprisingly get no error and the entire mtcars data frame is returned. It seems that x is being treated as an empty index and thus mtcars[x] is being treated as mtcars[]. But is using x as the index for `[` not enough to get the promise to be resolved and hit the expected 'argument is missing' error? If I use x by itself beforehand in foo2 below, I get the expected error.
foo <- function(x) mtcars[x] foo() # mtcars is printed in full foo2 <- function(x) {x; mtcars[x]} foo2() Error in foo2() : argument "x" is missing, with no default Session info: R version 4.4.1 (2024-06-14) Platform: x86_64-ubuntu18-linux-gnu Running under: Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS Matrix products: default BLAS/LAPACK: /apps/intel/2019.1/compilers_and_libraries_2019.1.144/linux/mkl/lib/intel64_lin/libmkl_gf_lp64.so; LAPACK version 3.7.0 locale: [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC=C [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8 LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8 [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NAME=C [9] LC_ADDRESS=C LC_TELEPHONE=C [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C time zone: America/New_York tzcode source: system (glibc) attached base packages: [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base other attached packages: [1] MKLthreads_0.1 loaded via a namespace (and not attached): [1] compiler_4.4.1 William Barcelona Data & Technology Analyst Global Financial Institutions | Division of International Finance Federal Reserve Board william.l.barcel...@frb.gov<mailto:william.l.barcel...@frb.gov> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ 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 https://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.