Function generation; change defaults of other functions (partial)

Question

I have the need for a function generator that takes another function and any arguments of that function and sets new defaults. I thought @hadley's pryr::partial was that magic function. It does exactly what I want except you can't then change that new default. So here I can change sep in my new paste function but not the new default of collapse = "_BAR_". How can I make partial perform this way (i.e., default to collapse = "_BAR_" but enable setting it to collapse = NULL if desired)? If this is not possible with partial is there a way to rewrite the code for partial to do this: https://github.com/hadley/pryr/blob/master/R/partial.r

library(pryr)
.paste <- pryr::partial(paste, collapse = "_FOO_")

.paste(1:5)
.paste(1:5, LETTERS[1:5], sep="_BAR_")
.paste(1:5, collapse=NULL)

> .paste(1:5)
[1] "1_FOO_2_FOO_3_FOO_4_FOO_5"

> .paste(1:5, LETTERS[1:5], sep="_BAR_")
[1] "1_BAR_A_FOO_2_BAR_B_FOO_3_BAR_C_FOO_4_BAR_D_FOO_5_BAR_E"

> .paste(1:5, collapse=NULL)
Error in paste(collapse = "_FOO_", ...) : 
  formal argument "collapse" matched by multiple actual arguments

Answer 1

partial is good for fixing certain parameter values, but if you want to change defaults, you might consider a different strategy. This would work

.paste <- paste
formals(.paste)$collapse <- "_FOO_"

This changes the parameters to the function

args(.paste)
# function (..., sep = " ", collapse = "_FOO_") 
# NULL

Then you can do

.paste(1:5)
# [1] "1_FOO_2_FOO_3_FOO_4_FOO_5"
.paste(1:5, LETTERS[1:5], sep="_BAR_")
# [1] "1_BAR_A_FOO_2_BAR_B_FOO_3_BAR_C_FOO_4_BAR_D_FOO_5_BAR_E"
.paste(1:5, collapse=NULL)
# [1] "1" "2" "3" "4" "5"

Answer 2

This is a canned function taking @MrFlick's great response and putting it into a function for future searchers:

hijack <- function(FUN, ...){

    .FUN <- FUN

    args <- list(...)
    invisible(lapply(seq_along(args), function(i) {
        formals(.FUN)[[names(args)[i]]] <<- args[[i]]
    }))
    .FUN
}

# Now Try It

.paste <- hijack(paste, collapse = "_FOO_")

.paste(1:5)
.paste(1:5, LETTERS[1:5], sep="_BAR_")
.paste(1:5, collapse=NULL)

Yielding

> .paste(1:5)
[1] "1_FOO_2_FOO_3_FOO_4_FOO_5"

> .paste(1:5, LETTERS[1:5], sep="_BAR_")
[1] "1_BAR_A_FOO_2_BAR_B_FOO_3_BAR_C_FOO_4_BAR_D_FOO_5_BAR_E"

> .paste(1:5, collapse=NULL)
[1] "1" "2" "3" "4" "5"