From: Noah Easterly <noah.easterly@...>
Date: 2006-10-02T22:30:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Is object[x](y,z) always invalid?

Yeah, it would be pretty easy to redefine method_missing to forward
calls to r.symbol(*args) to r[:symbol, *args], or whatever internal
structure you have.  Then your end users would have a clean syntax, and
you wouldn't have to do a lot of work.

Timothy Goddard wrote:
> You could still use the r.sum(1,2) for 99% of your method calls. The
> use of square brackets rather than round ones would hardly matter for
> the remaining few, which already look odd!
>
> Alex Gutteridge wrote:
> > On 1 Oct 2006, at 23:00, Kalman Noel wrote:
> >
> > > Alex Gutteridge:
> > >> foo[x](y,z)
> > >> foo[x][y,z]
> > >> foo[x].call(y,z)
> > >
> > > Would it be a problem to write foo(x,y,z) or foo[x,y,z]?
> > >
> > > Kalman
> >
> > That is another option I had considered. However, in the library in
> > question 'foo' represents a running R interpreter, 'x' represents an
> > R function and 'y' and 'z' represent arguments to that function. So I
> > would like to keep 'x' and 'y,z' visually separate as much as
> > possible. So, while it is a little extra typing, I prefer: r
> > ['sum'].call(1,2) over r('sum',1,2). In this case it would also be
> > possible to write the preferred form: r.sum(1,2) but as I mentioned,
> > this is not possible for some strangely named R functions such as '$'
> > or '[['.
> >
> > Dr Alex Gutteridge
> > Post-Doctoral Researcher
> >
> > Bioinformatics Center
> > Institute for Chemical Research
> > Kyoto University
> > Gokasho, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011
> > Japan