Re: functions with 'named' arguments

[John W. Eaton]

On 21-Mar-2008, Dupuis wrote:

| This means:
| 1) arguments are either positionnal or named, without anything special at
| the function definition
| 2)  foo = function(a, b) {
| + print(a);
| + print(b);
| + }
| foo(b=3) => error message, a is missing and no default value given
| foo(b=3, a=2) => disp a then b
| foo(b=3, a=2, b=5) => error: formal argument b corresponding to more than
| one input argument 
| 
| Finally, about the nargin: there should be something equivalent, but I still
| didn't find where. 
| Here are some examples of R calls:
| 
http://blog.moertel.com/articles/2006/01/20/wondrous-oddities-rs-function-call-semantics

Does R provide the equivalent of a nargin function?  If not, maybe
this is the reason?  If it does, then how does it work, and would it
be compatible with what Octave and Matlab currently do?

jwe