Include file changes

[Jonathan Rougier]

On Tue, 15 Jun 1999, Ross Ihaka wrote:

> (I think the rest of the code could also stand a bit of clean up too).

Can I re-raise the issue of comments in functions?  There are in practice
four types of comment: (1) Those that appear in .R files but don't make it
through to the code; (2) Those that make it through but don't get printed; 
(3) Those that get printed in the `wrong' place; and (4) Those that get
printed in the right place.

>From my reading of the source code I think comments are always going to be
tricky to locate while they are treated as attributes.  I appreciate that
this is a feature of the Blue Book description, but I wonder if a simpler
arrangement might not be possible.  How about if comments were legitimate
expressions that evaluated to "invisible(.Last.value)", or, for those that
follow on on the line, "; invisible(.Last.value)".  Of course this would
slow the function down if implemented as is, but perhaps not if
implemented in the C code.

This may be a naive suggestion, and I am certainly not an expert in
comments, but I do find it frustrating to see all most of my helpful
asides coming out in the wrong place.  It seems to be Sod's Law that
comments are most useful after if() statements, when of course they are
promoted up the function.

Cheers, Jonathan.

Jonathan Rougier                       Science Laboratories
Department of Mathematical Sciences    South Road
University of Durham                   Durham DH1 3LE

"[B]egin upon the precept ... that the things we see are to be 
 weighed in the scale with what we know"  (Meredith, 1879, The Egoist)



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