When we use some symbol to implement our logics, how does R know which value to assign?
R functions are treated much like any other R objects.
Assume we are running the following code,
> c <- 100 ## Assign a value to 'c'
> (c+1) ## Increment
[1] 101
>
> vec <- c(1:10) ## Create a vector
> vec
[1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10If we observe properly, we can still use c() to create vectors. Now the question is how does R know to use which c symbol to use and when? It’s because,
R has separate namespace for functions and non-functions.
Lets try to understand it clearly. When R tried to ‘bind/connect’ a value to a symbol (in our case c(), it search for the corresponding symbol in an order.
- Search the global environment (workspace) for a symbol name matching the request.
- Search the namespaces of each of the packages on the search list.
So the search list will have the follow packages (packages which we have loaded) including “.GlobalEnv” as a first item in the search list and the “base” is always at the very end.
> search()
[1] ".GlobalEnv" "tools:rstudio" "package:stats"
[4] "package:graphics" "package:grDevices" "package:utils"
[7] "package:datasets" "package:methods" "Autoloads"
[10] "package:base"“.GlobalEnv” is just our workspace. If there is a symbol matching it will get it from workspace. If nothing found it will search from the rest of the namespace in each of the packages.
Rules of scoping
R uses scoping rules called Lexical scoping (static scoping).
It will determine the value associated with free variable function.
> fun <- function(x,y){
+ x^2 + y / z
+ }
> fun(2,3)In the above function we have two arguments and they are x, y. But inside the function body we can find another symbol ‘z’. In this case z is called free variable.
According to scoping rules in R it first searches in the environment where the function was defined. An environment is collection of symbols and values. Environments have patents.
> parent.env(globalenv())
<environment: 0x10390d6e0>
attr(,"name")
[1] "tools:rstudio"Since we defined fun function in global environment, R will look for z in that scope (environment).
> environment(fun) ## to check the scope
<environment: R_GlobalEnv>These rule are matters because we can define some complex logics and function.
> y <- 10 ## y Symbol
>
> f1 <- function(x) {
+ y <- 2 ## Binding value to 'y' symbol
+ y^2 + f2(x) ## 'f2' function is used
+ }
>
> f2 <- function(x) {
+ x * y
+ }
>
> f1(2) ## Execute 'f1' function
[1] 24
> f2(2) ## Execute 'f2' fucntion
[1] 20