[R] Decreasing my personal entropy ...

[Gunter, Bert]

R-Listers:

A very minor -- and maybe silly -- question just for personal enlightenment.

In S (either R or S-Plus, AFAIK) when one types or pastes a trellis graphics
command into the commands/console window, the graph is automatically
produced:
e.g.,

trellis.device(...)
xyplot(y~x)

If one puts these in a function and calls the function, the same occurs.
However, if one sources in these command from a file (i.e., using source()),
automatic printing does not occur; one must explicitly call
print(xyplot(y~x)) . Why do things work this way?  

Many thanks.

Bert Gunter
Biometrics Research RY 84-16
Merck & Company
P.O. Box 2000
Rahway, NJ 07065-0900
Phone: (732) 594-7765
mailto: bert_gunter at merck.com

"The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning
process."      -- George E.P. Box


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