I am reading this paper (ungated copy) on evaluating the design of the R programming language, and am not able to understand a particular example on lexical scoping (or the absence thereof).
On page 4, the authors provide the following example of the use of the with
function:
with(formaldehyde, carb*optden)
They go on to say:
The astute reader will have noticed that the above example clashes
with our claim that R is lexically scoped. As is often the case, R is
lexically scoped up to the point it is not. R is above all a dynamic
language with full reflective access to the running program’s data and
representation. In the above example, the implementation of with
sidesteps lexical scoping by reflectively manipulating the
environment. This is done by a combination of lazy evaluation, dynamic
name lookup, and the ability turn code into text and back:
with.default <- function(env, expr, ...)
eval(substitute(expr),env, enclose=parent.frame())
The function uses substitute
to retrieve the unevaluated parse tree of
its second argument, then evaluates it with eval
in the environment
constituted by composing the first argument with the lexically
enclosing environment. The ‘...
’ is used to discard any additional
arguments.
How is the use of the with
function in this case a violation of the principles of lexical scoping?
Normally when discussed in the context of R lexical scoping means that free variables in a function (i.e. variables that are used in a function but not defined in the function) are looked up in the parent environment of the function, as opposed to the environment of the caller (also referred to as the parent frame) but there are no free variables in with.default
so the example does not illustrate a violation of lexical scoping in that sense.
For example, this illustrates lexical scoping:
x <- 1
f <- function() x
g <- function() { x <- 0; f() }
g() # 1
The answer is 1 because 1 is defined in the environment that f
is defined in. Had R used dynamic scoping rather than lexical scoping the answer would have been 0 (using the environment of the caller). We can illlustrate how R can emulate dynamic scoping like this:
f <- function() eval.parent(quote(x))
g() # 0
ADDED:
In a comment below @hadley suggested that the authors may have been referring to the fact that the second actual argument to with.default
is not evaluated lexically and this interpretation seems likely. Instead of being evaluated relative to the surrounding lexical environment the second actual argument of with.default
is read into the with.default
function as an expression using substitute
and then evaluated relative to the first argument using eval
. There is some question of what the definition of lexical scoping ought to be as it is rarely defined even when extensively discussed but typical discussions in relation to R refer to it as the treatment of free variables. See for example Gentleman & Ihaka.