closureGenerator: Programmatically create functions with a shared environment
In sckott/sxslt: R extension for libxslt

Description Usage Arguments Value Author(s) See Also Examples

This function returns a function which, each time it is called, creates a new list of functions all of which share the same environment and so have access to shared non-local variables whose values persist across calls to these functions. The function returned by a call to closureGenerator is identified as a special function with this characteristic by its S3 class ClosureGenerator.

This function allows the caller of the closureGenerator or the caller of the function it creates to specify the environment to associate with each function and also to provide a list of variables which will be assigned into to the environment. In addition to these variables, each function will be able to "see" (i.e. access) all of the other functions as they are assigned into the environment using the names in the list.

This is used when registering a function as an XSLT extension function. Rather than registering a ClosureGenerator function, the registration mechanism invokes this function and registers the functions it returns, not the original function.

1	closureGenerator(..., .funs = list(...), .vars = list(), .env = new.env())

`...`	`name = function` pairs. This is the form of the list that is returned by calling the function this function returns. However, the functions will have been assigned the relevant environment, but the names will remain the same.
`.funs`	an alternative way to specify the name = function pairs other than .... This is useful when the collection of functions is already in list-form and it is incovenient to call `do.call` to pass them via the ... mechanism.
`.vars`	a list of name = value pairs specifying any variables that are to be copied into the environment that will be associated with, and shared by, each function. These can be overridden in the call to the function that `closureGenerator` returns.
`.env`	the environment which is to be associated with each of the functions when the returned function is invoked. This can be specified in the call to the returned function, in the same manner as `.vars`.

A function of class ClosureGenerator. That function will return a list of functions which will have the same environment.

Duncan Temple Lang

addXSLTFunctions registerXSLFunction

  # This is a silly example only to illustrate the
  # mechanism.
  # We have two functions that share a common variable
  #  count
  # Each returns a value but records how often it was called

 a = function(size = 10, p = .5) {
    count["a"] <<- count["a"] + 1
    rbinom(1, size, p)
 }

 b = function(lambda = 5) {
    count["b"] <<- count["b"] + 1
    rpois(1, lambda)
 }

 numCount <-
  function(which = character()) {
     if(length(which))
        count[which]
     else
        sum(count)
  }

  f = closureGenerator(binomial = a, poisson = b, counts = numCount,
                       .vars = list(count = c(a = 0, b = 0)))

  addXSLTFunctions(f)

  stylesheet = system.file("examples", "closureCount.xsl", package = "Sxslt")

  z = xsltApplyStyleSheet("<?xml version='1.0'?><doc/>", stylesheet)
  library(XML)
  cat(saveXML(z))

     # Now do it again and we get a new set of counts.
  z = xsltApplyStyleSheet("<?xml version='1.0'?><doc/>", stylesheet)
  cat(saveXML(z))


   # If we really wanted to have the number of counts cumulate across
   # all calls to  xsltApplyStyleSheet(), then we would register the
   # functions themselves.

      # call the closure generator function ourselves
      # and register the individual functions returned by that
      # not the closureGenerator. These are function objects that will be
      # added to each XSLT context.
  addXSLTFunctions(.funcs = f(), clear = TRUE)

      # apply the stylesheet twice
  for(i in 1:2) 
     z = xsltApplyStyleSheet("<?xml version='1.0'?><doc/>", stylesheet)

      # We should see 8 calls to the functions, not 4.
  cat(saveXML(z))


 # For a real example, see dynamic.R in XML/Literate/ in the
 # org/omegahat repository, i.e. the SXMLDocs package.