[Rd] string concatenation operator (revisited)
Rui Barradas
ru|pb@rr@d@@ @end|ng |rom @@po@pt
Sun Dec 5 08:41:05 CET 2021
Hello,
Bert Gunter started a very recent R-Help thread [1] about the following
method not working.
`+.character` <- function(x, y) paste0(x, y)
The discussion is worth reading and at least partly answers to the
reason why the feature request has never made it to base R.
It goes without saying that I do not speak for the R Core team.
[1] https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2021-December/473163.html
Hope this helps,
Rui Barradas
Às 22:36 de 04/12/21, Grant McDermott escreveu:
> Hi all,
>
> I wonder if the R Core team might reconsider an old feature request, as detailed in this 2005 thread: https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2005-February/thread.html#66698
>
> The TL;DR version is base R support for a `+.character` method. This would essentially provide a shortcut to `paste0`, in much the same way that `\(x)` now provides a shortcut to `function(x)`.
>
>> a = "hello "; b = "world"
>> a + b
>> [1] "hello world"
>
> I appreciate some of the original concerns raised against a native "string1 + string2" implementation. The above thread also provides several use-at-your-own-risk workarounds. But sixteen years is a long time in software development and R now stands as something of an exception on this score. Python, Julia, Stata, and SQL (among various others) all support native string concatenation/interpolation using binary/arithmetic operators. It's been a surprising source of frustration for students in some of the classes I teach, particularly those coming from another language.
>
> Many thanks for considering.
>
> PS. I hope I didn't miss any additional discussion of this issue beyond the original 2005 thread. My search efforts didn't turn anything else up, except this popular Stackoverflow question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4730551/making-a-string-concatenation-operator-in-r
>
> Grant McDermott
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Economics
> University of Oregon
> www.grantmcdermott.com
>
>
> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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