Question

How do I partially bind/apply arguments to a function in R?

This is how far I got, then I realized that this approach doesn’t work…

bind <- function(fun,...)
{
  argNames <- names(formals(fun))
  bindedArgs <- list(...)
  bindedNames <- names(bindedArgs)
  function(argNames[!argNames %in% bindedArgs])
   {
   #TODO
  }
}

Thanks!

Answer 1

Have you tried looking at roxygen’s Curry function?

> library(roxygen) 
> Curry
function (FUN, ...) 
{
    .orig = list(...)
    function(...) do.call(FUN, c(.orig, list(...)))
}
<environment: namespace:roxygen>

Example usage:

> aplusb <- function(a,b) {
+   a + 2*b
+ }
> oneplusb <- Curry(aplusb,1)
> oneplusb(2)
[1] 5

Edit:
Curry is concisely defined to accept named or unnamed arguments, but partial application of fun to arguments by way of formal() assignment requires more sophisticated matching to emulate the same functionality. For instance:

> bind <- function(fun,...)
+ {
+   argNames <- names(formals(fun))
+   boundArgs <- list(...)
+   boundNames <- names(boundArgs)
+   if(is.null(boundNames)) {
+     formals(fun)[1:length(boundArgs)] <- boundArgs
+   } else {
+     formals(fun)[match(names(boundArgs),argNames)] <- boundArgs
+   }
+   fun
+ }
> oneplusb <- bind(aplusb,1)
> oneplusb(2)
Error in 2 * b : 'b' is missing

Because the first argument in this function is still a, you need to specify which argument 2 is intended for (b=), or pass it as the second argument.

> oneplusb
function (a = 1, b) 
{
    a + 2 * b
}
> oneplusb(b=2) ## or oneplusb(,2)
[1] 5