[Rd] should the text for RIGHT_ASSIGN be -> in getParseData()?

[William Dunlap]

>  Is there any reason right-assign with "->" still exists? How much
> code on CRAN uses it, and how trivially could it be excised?

I use '->' a lot when doing interactive work.  I often first run a command
to see its printed output then decide that I had better save its value.
The up-arrow key gives me the previous command line with the cursor placed at the
end of the line so adding '-> z' at the end of the line is convenient.
(Not using the up-arrow key and doing 'z <- .Last.value' also works, but
I don't like its context sensitivity.)

I never use '->' when writing code in a file, so you would have to search
my .Rhistory files, not my *.R files, for evidence of its usefulness to me.

Bill Dunlap
Spotfire, TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf
> Of Barry Rowlingson
> Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 9:29 AM
> To: Duncan Murdoch
> Cc: R-devel
> Subject: Re: [Rd] should the text for RIGHT_ASSIGN be -> in getParseData()?
> 
> On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Duncan Murdoch
> <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > R itself doesn't make use of the text column, it's for display of code
> > by highlighters etc.  So if anyone does assume text is a function name,
> > it's their bug, not ours.  In fact, the bug is already there, because
> > there is actually one other example which was being parsed properly,
> > "**" is translated to "^".  There's no `**` function, but 2**3 works.
> 
>  Is there any reason right-assign with "->" still exists? How much
> code on CRAN uses it, and how trivially could it be excised? Can we
> also have 'up assign'  and "down assign" so I can do:
> 
>  >     3
>  > x -^
>  > x -v
>  >     4
> 
>  - they make just as much sense.
> 
>  Okay, lets see all the edge cases.....
> 
> Barry
> 
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