From: ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Date: Sun 30 Jun 2002 - 23:18:22 EST
Message-id: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0206301400440.1513-100000@gannet.stats>
On Sun, 30 Jun 2002 Bill.Venables@cmis.csiro.au wrote:
> Peter Dalgaard notes:
(Quoting Tony Rossini)
> > > Note that "_" is assignment in S (and hence R, sigh...).
> >
> > Soon to be deprecated, though... (but it will probably take a while
> > before we can reintroduce it as part of variable names).
> >
> [WNV] Indeed it may, so much so that I am surprised such a change
> is even on the agenda. We may agree that using "_" a the assignment
> operator can make code difficult to read, but many people do use it, and
> often with some enthusiasm. It looks a bit to me like unscrambling the egg.
> Let me be clear about this: I really do dislike the thing and I'm not about
> to argue that it should be left untouched. I'm just very surprised there
> isn't an enormous howl of protest already...
That's because 1.6.0 is not due for release until September or so: `_' is
already deprecated in R-devel, but few people use the bleeding-edge
version. I don't see underline becoming valid in a syntactic name before
2.0, though.
> Are we also about to allow spaces in names and the "=" sign as yet
> another alternative form of the left assignment operator, as in S4? Should
> be even more interesting.
Have `we' been sleeping in class? From the NEWS for 1.4.0:
o The operator "=" is now allowed as an assignment
operator in the grammar, for consistency with other languages,
including recent versions of S-PLUS. [...]
(and those interested please read the ... or help("=")).
As for spaces in names, there is an intention to allow quoted non-standard
names more widely acceptable, including in formulae.
-- Brian D. Ripley, ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272860 (secr) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request@stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
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