Possibility to force export instead of s3method in NAMESPACE

[skranz]

I use the current roxygen2 Version 3.1.0 which seems to be current version on CRAN. I have a package stringtools (https://github.com/skranz/stringtools) that has function names like str.find, which is NOT used as an S3 method for the class str. (I agree that the naming ambiguity is a bit unfortunate, but I guess such naming ambiguity happens fairly often in R)
Older versions of roxygen2 created correct export statements in the NAMESPACE file, like:

export(str.find)

My version 3.1.0 instead creates:

S3method(str,find)

which makes my package not run properly.
Is there some way to force roxygen2 to create export statements instead of S3method statements? Otherwise, I always have to manually keep the NAMESPACE file up-to-date, which is not as convenient as it could be.

[hadley]

You really shouldn't call use . in function names unless it's a S3 method (especially since str() is a generic!), but to override the default you can just do @export str.find.

[MichaelChirico]

FWIW, here's an edge case where this is apparently necessary

If my package foo makes a function foo.bar, and foo Depends on a package baz that exports a foo generic, but my foo.bar is not intended to be a foo method, I need to do @export foo.bar.

Specifically in my case there's a function cv.somename, named to evoke glmnet::cv.glmnet(), which AFAIK is not a cv method for class glmnet. The package also (incidentally) depends on a package exporting cv and declaring it a generic. Because the dependency is transitive/incidental, it took a while to realize why loadNamespace() was failing (couldn't find object cv)...

This basically comes down to the well-known problem with S3 to begin with where . is part of valid names as well as the method-class separator. Obviously snake_case is better but we don't always have that flexibility :)

[MonteShaffer]

Debating over "edge cases" is not the point. Extensibility is the point. If I want to use a point ., it is allowable by R syntax. I should not have to justify my "why", just an answer on how. I don't have to marry myself to the religion of snake_case!

If I want to use str.find as my fn.name and paste it directly into R, it automatically gets S3 listed. How do I delist it from that namespace? That is, I want to use str.find independent of namespace("str")? Is there a delist function?

[gaborcsardi]

If you don't add @export to str.find(), then roxygen2 does not write anything about it in NAMESPACE.

If you want export(str.find) in the NAMESPACE, then write:

#' @export str.find

str.find <- function() {
  # ...
}

Is this what you need?

[spgarbet]

The base R statistical tests all use a "." in their name, e.g. wilcox.test. If one were to maintain consistency with base R when adding a statistical test, then this conflict between "shouldn't use '.' in function names" and "best to maintain consistency to minimize user surprise" arises.