[Rd] n=1 default for random number generators

William Dunlap wdunlap at tibco.com
Mon Nov 16 17:41:46 CET 2009


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org 
> [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Duncan Murdoch
> Sent: Monday, November 16, 2009 8:28 AM
> To: Richard Cotton
> Cc: r-devel at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Rd] n=1 default for random number generators
> 
> On 11/16/2009 11:00 AM, Richard Cotton wrote:
> > One tiny thing that would be very nice to have is a default 
> value of n=1 in
> > the random number generator functions, enabling, e.g., 
> runif() instead of
> > runif(1).  This won't break anyone's existing code and ought to be
> > relatively straightforward to do.  
> > 
> > Is there anyone in the core team who would be willing to 
> include this
> > change?
> 
> I doubt it.  Even if you put together the patch (and I didn't see an 
> offer to do so), merging it into the trunk code would take more work 
> than you'd save in several years of typing the "1".

Also, you would probably hear complaints that n=1 is
not a common value for the argument in 'well-written'
(really, vectorized cpu-efficient) R code.

Bill Dunlap
Spotfire, TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com 

 
> Duncan Murdoch
> 
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