Split up `…` arguments and distribute to multiple functions

by

Separate Lists If you really want to pass different sets of parameters to different functions then it’s probably cleaner to specify separate lists:

foo <- function(x, y, sum = list(), grep = list()) {
 list(sum = do.call("sum", c(x, sum)), grep = do.call("grep", c("abc", y, grep)))
}

# test

X <- c(1:5, NA, 6:10)
Y <- "xyzabcxyz"
foo(X, Y, sum = list(na.rm = TRUE), grep = list(value = TRUE))

## $sum
## [1] 55
## 
## $grep
## [1] "xyzabcxyz"

Hybrid list / … An alternative is that we could use … for one of these and then specify the other as a list, particularly in the case that one of them is frequently used and the other is infrequently used. The frequently used one would be passed via … and the infrequently used via a list. e.g.

foo <- function(x, y, sum = list(), ...) {
 list(sum = do.call("sum", c(x, sum)), grep = grep("abc", y, ...))
}

foo(X, Y, sum = list(na.rm = TRUE), value = TRUE)

Here are a couple of examples of the hybrid approach from R itself:

i) The mapply function takes that approach using both ... and a MoreArgs list:

> args(mapply)
function (FUN, ..., MoreArgs = NULL, SIMPLIFY = TRUE, USE.NAMES = TRUE) 
NULL

ii) nls also takes this approach using both ... and the control list:

> args(nls)
function (formula, data = parent.frame(), start, control = nls.control(), 
    algorithm = c("default", "plinear", "port"), trace = FALSE, 
    subset, weights, na.action, model = FALSE, lower = -Inf, 
    upper = Inf, ...) 
NULL

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