[Rd] New pipe operator

Rui Barradas ru|pb@rr@d@@ @end|ng |rom @@po@pt
Sun Dec 6 08:51:10 CET 2020


Hello,

If Hilbert liked beer, I like "pipe".

More seriously, a new addition like this one is going to cause problems 
yet unknown. But it's a good idea to have a pipe operator available. As 
someone used to magrittr's data pipelines, I will play with this base 
one before making up my mind. I don't expect its behavior to be exactly 
like magrittr "%>%" (and it's not). For the moment all I can say is that 
it is something R users are used to and that it now avoids loading a 
package.
As for the new way to define anonymous functions, I am less sure. Too 
much syntatic sugar? Or am I finding the syntax ugly?

Hope this helps,

Rui Barradas


Às 03:22 de 06/12/20, Gregory Warnes escreveu:
> If we’re being mathematically pedantic, the “pipe” operator is actually
> function composition >
> That being said, pipes are a simple and well-known idiom. While being less
> than mathematically exact, it seems a reasonable   label for the (very
> useful) behavior.
> 
> On Sat, Dec 5, 2020 at 9:43 PM Abby Spurdle <spurdle.a using gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>> This is a good addition
>>
>> I can't understand why so many people are calling this a "pipe".
>> Pipes connect processes, via their I/O streams.
>> Arguably, a more general interpretation would include sockets and files.
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipeline_(Unix)
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_pipe
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_pipe
>>
>> As far as I can tell, the magrittr-like operators are functions (not
>> pipes), with nonstandard syntax.
>> This is not consistent with R's original design philosophy, building
>> on C, Lisp and S, along with lots of *important* math and stats.
>>
>> It's possible that some parties are interested in creating a kind of
>> "data pipeline".
>> I'm interested in this myself, and I think we could discuss this more.
>> But I'm not convinced the magrittr-like operators help to achieve this
>> goal.
>> Which, in my opinion, would require one to model programs as directed
>> graphs, along with some degree of asynchronous input.
>>
>> Presumably, these operators will be added to R anyway, and (almost) no
>> one will listen to me.
>>
>> So, I would like to make one suggestion:
>> Is it possible for these operators to *not* be named:
>>      The R Pipe
>>      The S Pipe
>>      Or anything with a similar meaning.
>>
>> Maybe tidy pipe, or something else that links it to its proponents?
>>
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>>



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