Thanks for the responses,

Im not familiar with the development of readline 6, is it possible to test
this functionality now, or will this be included in a future standard
release of R?

Also, it was suggested that Emacs and the ESS package may be of use.  Im not
overly familiar with emacs, but I will give it a go.

Thanks,
    Lee Kelvin


2009/10/8 Deepayan Sarkar <deepayan.sarkar@gmail.com>

> On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 5:56 AM, Lee Kelvin <lee.s.kelvin@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Pressing the <TAB> key when typing a function into an R terminal does not
> > produce the expected output.  Currently, R will order all of the
> available
> > function inputs into alphabetical order and present them as options,
> whereas
> > it should display the inputs in the order they appear in the function.
> >
> > For example:
> >
> >> test = function(b,a,c){
> > print(b)
> > a*c
> > }
> >
> >> test(   <TAB><TAB>
> > a=  b=  c=
> >
> > where <TAB> indicates pressing the Tab key.
> >
> > It's easy to see that if the function were designed to accept 'b' as a
> > string, and 'a' and 'c' as numerics that this function would fail if the
> > user made the assumption that the <TAB> output is in the correct order,
> and
> > input 'a' as a string.
> >
> > This is a simple example, however I have several functions that I use
> often
> > and each has many possible inputs.  It would be useful to not have to
> > remember the order the inputs are in for each function, or have to use
> > args(function) beforehand.  It is also on occasion useful not to have to
> > explicitly name each input in your function.
> >
> > Im using Ubuntu Linux 9.04 and a standard install of R 2.9.2
> (unfortunately
> > not the polished R.app available on Macs - which coincidentally do
> display
> > function inputs in the correct order).
> >
> > I welcome any thoughts, disagreements or tips any of you may have,
>
> The sorting is a feature of the readline library that is used as the
> backend (there is no sorting on the Windows GUI). Apparently readline
> 6 allows you to inhibit sorting, so that might turn out to be useful.
>
> -Deepayan
>



-- 
Lee Kelvin

lee.s.kelvin@gmail.com
07765431721

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