[R] the underscore ("_") in variable name

[Murray Jorgensen]

This seems as good a place as any to gripe about the R/S assignment symbol
"<-" !  What absolute fiend said: "now let's see, this is the symbol that
will be most used in this language, so let's represent it by a
two-character string, and further, let's have the two characters in
different cases so that it will require a change of case mid-stream!".

Murray Jorgensen

At 04:08 PM 2-10-00 +1000, Bill Venables wrote:
>At 14:35 02/10/00 +0800, mohd zamri wrote:
>>new to R and starting to learn to program R. The underscore ("_") did some
>>suprising result. e.g
>>
>>> c <- c(1,2,3,4,5)
>>> mean(c)
>>[1] 3
>>> c_mean <- mean(c)
>>> c
>>[1] 3
>>
>>having some experience in C, I thought the underscore is "always" valid in
>>variable name. totally confuse me. Reread the R-FAQ a few times, and found
>>on pg. 7 foot-note which states that;
>>
>>   the underscore character "_" is an alllowable synonym for the left
>>   pointing assignment operator "<-", ...........
>>   
>>it is appear that R parse  "c_mean <-  mean(c)" as "c <- mean <- mean(c)",
>>which explain the result.
>>
>>suggestion:
>>
>>I believe it would be helpful if this point be make clear on the FAQ, and
>>not mention as a footnote. What is a proper naming convention and a few
>>example of valid/invalid name for variables.
>
>Ah, but now that you have been bitten by it, I bet you don't make the same
>mistake again!  :-)
>
>There is a no-win situation here.  It is there (I presume) mainly for
>compatibility with S.  It is in S because some old keyboards did not have
>an underscore but a left-pointing arrow at that same position.  For better
>or worse we are stuck with it now.
>
>If we follow your suggestion and give prominence to the fact that "_" is a
>synonym for "<-" then as sure as eggs some people will actually USE it!
>This is, in the opinion of many of us at least, a very BAD thing as it
>makes code just about unreadible.  On the other hand if we don't give
>prominence to the fact but just hide it in an obscure footnote, then many
>people will get bitten first time (but only then) and come complaining to
>R-help and I will write more tetchy little notes like this one...
>
>:-)
>
>Bill Venables.
>--
>Bill Venables, Statistician                         Tel. +61 7 3826 7251 
>CSIRO Marine Laboratories,                          Fax. +61 7 3826 7304
>Cleveland, Qld, 4163                  Email: Bill.Venables at cmis.csiro.au
>AUSTRALIA                        http://www.cmis.csiro.au/bill.venables/
>
>
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