[Rd] Patch proposal for R style consistency (concerning deparse.c)

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 13-05-01 4:08 PM, Tim Triche, Jr. wrote:
> What harm comes of having the code be cut-and-paste-able?
>
> I do not mean to be contrary but a downside to applying the patch seems to
> be lacking.
> Perhaps I am missing something obvious and if so I beg your pardon for
> wasting your time.

I think you are missing some downsides which may not be obvious:

  - it would mean that lots of published results would no longer match 
what R produces.
  - it would mean that lots of tests for changes in output would 
suddenly fail.
  - it would support the mistaken belief that some people have that the 
current output is not valid code (even though there are nearly 200,000 
instances of similar usage on CRAN).

Perhaps 20 years ago it should have been written the way you suggest, 
but it would cause far more harm than benefit to change it now.

Duncan Murdoch

>
> Thanks,
>
> --t
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 12:19 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On 01/05/2013 1:34 PM, Tim Triche, Jr. wrote:
>>
>>> +1 to having runnable code emitted
>>>
>>
>> It does emit runnable code, which is why Herve's complaint was nonsense.
>>   It doesn't emit code of which every substring is runnable.
>>
>> Duncan Murdoch
>>
>>
>>
>>> patch seems to work nicely, hopefully R-core will agree to apply it to
>>> HEAD
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 9:45 AM, Paul Johnson <pauljohn32 at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Whoa.
>>>>
>>>> Don't let my valuable suggestion get lost.
>>>>
>>>>   I want "} else {".  Yihue wants "} else {".  And I have not heard
>>> anybody
>>>> say they prefer the other way, unless you interpret Duncan's comment
>>>> "that's nonsense" as a blanket defense of the status quo. But I don't
>>> think
>>>> he meant that.  This is a matter of style consistency and avoidance of
>>> new
>>>> R-user confusion and error.
>>>>
>>>> After reading the help for "if", I don't see how anybody can argue
>>> against
>>>> this.  Good R code has this style:
>>>>
>>>> } else {
>>>>
>>>> and not
>>>>
>>>> }
>>>>   else
>>>>
>>>> because the latter fails if it is run line-by-line.  While trying to
>>> teach
>>>> people how to write R programs, it would be nice if the output of
>>>> print.function was consistent with the good way, the way that is
>>> actually
>>>> practiced in the R source code itself. This is a major source of new
>>>> programmer confusion. Its very tough to explain and teach.
>>>>
>>>> pj
>>>> --
>>>> Paul E. Johnson
>>>> Professor, Political Science      Assoc. Director
>>>> 1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504      Center for Research Methods
>>>> University of Kansas                 University of Kansas
>>>> http://pj.freefaculty.org               http://quant.ku.edu
>>>>
>>>>          [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>