[R] Macros versus functions

[Huntsinger, Reid]

A nice article by Thomas Lumley on a sort of macro facility for
R appeared in the R Newsletter a few issues ago: 
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/Rnews_2001-3.pdf

Reid Huntsinger

-----Original Message-----
From: Murray Jorgensen [mailto:maj at stats.waikato.ac.nz]
Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2002 4:14 PM
To: R-help
Subject: [R] Macros versus functions


R is a function-oriented language and functions have the advantage that 
they control unintended side effects of computations on the workspace. 
Still, there are times when I am using R when I want to make a large 
number of changes to the worksheet repeatedly and where the easiest way 
  seems to be to keep pasting in the same chunk of code, or to put it on 
a file and use source("filename"). So effectively R does have macros as 
well as functions.

Question: is the use of macros in this way 'bad practice' to be 
deprecated, and if so why? (If I decide that it is bad practice I will 
probably go on being bad, but I will try not to pass on bad habits to my 
students!)

Murray

-- 
Dr Murray Jorgensen      http://www.stats.waikato.ac.nz/Staff/maj.html
Department of Statistics, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Email: maj at waikato.ac.nz                                Fax 7 838 4155
Phone  +64 7 838 4773 wk    +64 7 849 6486 home     Mobile 021 395 862

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