[R] Several R vs S-Plus issues

[David Brahm]

Marc Feldesman (feldesmanm at pdx.edu) wrote:
> David, if S-Plus works for you, why are you bothering to convert all your
> code to R? 

Group decision.  I have the most old S code of the group, so I have the most
issues with incompatibility.  If I can't get it to work, we either revert to
S-Plus, or bifurcate into the "S people" and the "R people".

> R is open source. If you want to change something, you are free to change 
> it and you are free to contribute your changes to the community.

Really?  You think nobody in the community would complain if I went in and
changed the behavior of "[" for character vectors?  I don't really understand
the OSS model, but I doubt that.  I think I am a "user", not a "developer".


Thomas Lumley (tlumley at u.washington.edu) wrote:
> deep breaths and count to 10...

OK, so here's what I think I've learned.  Feedback please if I've still got it
wrong.
1) Do not Cc: to r-bugs!!!
2) Bugs go individually to r-bugs.  Here is the only one I think qualifies:
   - myfun <- function(x, ...) {x[...] <- 0;  x}  fails if no ... given
3) Feature and compatibility requests go to r-devel, to which I am just now
   subscribed.  Separate messages, I suppose.  These would be:
   - LETTERS[c(NA,2)] in S is c("","B"), but in R is c("NA","B")
   - system() has no "input" argument in R
   - No slice.index()
   - No rowSums(), colSums(), colVars(), etc.
   - No unpaste()
4) Issues already addressed (rowsum, identical) don't need to go anywhere.
5) Other differences are just FYI, and don't need to go anywhere.
   Philippe Grosjean (phgrosje at ulb.ac.be) suggested I make a project of
   collecting all such differences, but frankly that's too big a job for me.
   I am, after all, supposed to be working!

I have the greatest respect for Peter and all the others who work so hard at
this project.  I'm obviously having some trouble understanding the
communication model, but I'll get it eventually.  Peace.

			     -- David Brahm (a215020 at agate.fmr.com)
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