How do I call the `function` function?

Question

I am trying to call the function `function` to define a function in R code.

As we all know™️, `function`is a .Primitive that’s

Answer 1

This is because function is a special primitive:

typeof(`function`)
#> [1] "special"

The arguments are not evaluated, so you have actually passed quote(formals(mean)) instead of the value of formals(mean). I don't think there's a way of calling function directly without evaluation tricks, except with an empty formals list which is just NULL.