[Phylobase-devl] Conference call minutes

[Ben Bolker]

Hilmar Lapp wrote:
> 
> On Mar 22, 2008, at 2:56 PM, Peter Cowan wrote:
> 
>> ancestors(..., which = c("all", "parent")) # default to "all" since 
>> ancestor() exists
>>
>> descendants(..., which = c("children", "tips", "all")) # first option 
>> calls children()
> 
> Does that mean the default for descendants() is which="children", 
> meaning only direct children? Isn't that inconsistent with the default 
> of ancestors()?
> 
>     -hilmar
> 
> 

   Yes, it is.
   The problem is that I think people will frequently want to access 
direct ancestors and descendants (parents/children).  "ancestor" is
a nice short term for "only direct ancestors", because there is by
definition only one of them.  There are (usually) multiple descendants,
so this shortcut doesn't work for descendants.

   (1) we could leave it this way (too confusing?)
   (2) we could switch the default to "tips" (probably the second
most common request), and indicate that children() is available if
one wants a shortcut for descendants(tree,which="children")

   votes?

   Ben

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