r - Behavior of do.call() in the presence of arguments without defaults -

this question follow-up previous answer raised puzzle.

reproducible example previous answer:

models <- list( lm(runif(10)~rnorm(10)),lm(runif(10)~rnorm(10)),lm(runif(10)~rnorm(10)) ) lm1 <- lm(runif(10)~rnorm(10)) library(functional) # works do.call( curry(anova, object=lm1), models ) # do.call( anova, models ) 

the question why do.call(anova, models) work fine, @roland points out?

the signature anova anova(object, ...)

anova calls usemethod, should* call anova.lm should call anova.lmlist, first line objects <- list(object, ...), object doesn't exist in formulation.

the thing can surmise do.call might not fill in ellipses fills in arguments without defaults , leaves ellipsis catch? if so, documented, it's new me!

* clue--how usemethod know call anova.lm if first argument unspecified? there's no anova.list method or anova.default or similar...

in regular function call ... captures arguments position, partial match , full match:

f <- function(...) g(...) g <- function(x, y, zabc) c(x = x, y = y, zabc = zabc)  f(1, 2, 3) # x    y zabc  # 1    2    3      f(z = 3, y = 2, 1) # x    y zabc  # 1    2    3      

do.call behaves in same way except instead of supplying arguments directly function, they're stored in list , do.call takes care of passing them function:

do.call(f, list(1, 2, 3)) # x    y zabc  # 1    2    3      do.call(f, list(z = 3, y = 2, 1)) # x    y zabc  # 1    2    3