R-beta: dataframes and function side effects

[Martyn Plummer]

Jim Lindsey wrote:
> 
> I have a function that returns a dataframe. A second funtion calls the
> first to obtain the dataframe, then attaches it to have access to the
> column names. Lo and behold, this is done globally so that, after
> running the second function a few times, I have all kinds of
> dataframes attached giving all sorts of weird errors. If I put a
> detach at the end of the second function, things are better, but
> during debugging, if I ctrl-C while it is running (this is a random
> effects Cox PH model, rather slow), I start accumulating dataframes
> again. I suppose that if (some version of) S-Plus does the same thing,
> this must be good stuff but it is a very annoying side effect of a
> function to have dataframes attached globally and not locally.

S-PLUS 3.3 does do the same thing. If you want to safely detach
the data frame even when you interrupt your function, you could
put 
	on.exit(if(search()[2]=="your.data.frame") detach())

at the beginning of your function.

Martyn
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