[Rd] Multiple Assignment built into the R Interpreter?

[Gabor Grothendieck]

The gsubfn package can do that.

    library(gsubfn)

    # swap a and b without explicitly creating a temporary
     a <- 1; b <- 2
     list[a,b] <- list(b,a)

     # get eigenvectors and eigenvalues
     list[eval, evec] <- eigen(cbind(1,1:3,3:1))

     # get today's month, day, year
     require(chron)
     list[Month, Day, Year] <- month.day.year(unclass(Sys.Date()))

     # get first two components of linear model ignoring rest
     list[Coef, Resid] <- lm(rnorm(10) ~ seq(10))

     # assign Green and Blue (but not Red) components
     list[,Green,Blue]  <- col2rgb("aquamarine")

     # Assign QR and QRaux but not other components
     list[QR,,QRaux]  <- qr(c(1,1:3,3:1))


On Sat, Mar 11, 2023 at 7:47 AM Sebastian Martin Krantz
<sebastian.krantz using graduateinstitute.ch> wrote:
>
> Dear R Core,
>
> working on my dynamic factor modelling package, which requires several
> subroutines to create and update several system matrices, I come back to
> the issue of being annoyed by R not supporting multiple assignment out of
> the box like Matlab, Python and julia. e.g. something like
>
> A, C, Q, R = init_matrices(X, Y, Z)
>
> would be a great addition to the language. I know there are several
> workarounds such as the %<-% operator in the zeallot package or my own %=%
> operator in collapse, but these don't work well for package development as
> R CMD Check warns about missing global bindings for the created variables,
> e.g. I would have to use
>
> A <- C <- Q <- R <- NULL
> .c(A, C, Q, R) %=% init_matrices(X, Y, Z)
>
> in a package, which is simply annoying. Of course the standard way of
>
> init <- init_matrices(X, Y, Z)
>  A <- init$A; C <- init$C; Q <- init$Q; R <- init$R
> rm(init)
>
> is also super cumbersome compared to Python or Julia. Another reason is of
> course performance, even my %=% operator written in C has a non-negligible
> performance cost for very tight loops, compared to a solution at the
> interpretor level or in a primitive function such as `=`.
>
> So my conclusion at this point is that it is just significantly easier to
> implement such codes in Julia, in addition to the greater performance it
> offers. There are obvious reasons why I am still coding in R and C, thanks
> to the robust API and great ecosystem of packages, but adding this could be
> a presumably low-hanging fruit to make my life a bit easier. Several issues
> for this have been filed on Stackoverflow, the most popular one (
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7519790/assign-multiple-new-variables-on-lhs-in-a-single-line)
> has been viewed 77 thousand times.
>
> But maybe this has already been discussed here and already decided against.
> In that case, a way to browse R-devel archives to find out would be nice.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Sebastian
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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