Should assignments be excluded from undesirable_function_linter?

[MichaelChirico]

lint(text="foo <- 2", linters=undesirable_function_linter(c(foo=NA)))
# <text>:1:1: style: [undesirable_function_linter] Avoid undesirable function "foo".
# foo <- 2
# ^~~

That looks like a false positive to me. If anything, that should be covered by object_overwrite_linter() if the user wants to avoid masking foo.

[Bisaloo]

I would go a bit further and then that undesirable_function_linter() should be restricted to function calls.

If we only ignore assignments and I define a foo variable as you did, I cannot then use it without false positives.

lintr::lint(
  text = 'paste0(foo, "bar")',
  linters = lintr::undesirable_function_linter(c(foo = NA))
)
#> <text>:1:8: style: [undesirable_function_linter] Avoid undesirable function "foo".
#> paste0(foo, "bar")
#>        ^~~

^{Created on 2025-07-21 with reprex v2.1.1}

[MichaelChirico]

we can toggle that with the argument symbol_is_undesirable