[R] Some Programming Humor - Quine

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 15 May 2003, Wolfgang Koller wrote:

> By the way, some questions that arose in this programming exercise:
> a) is there a simpler way to do the assignment 
>      STR <- "\""
>    without using quotes?

Not simpler, but '"' is probably easier to read.

> b) what does this cryptic <environment: 034768AC> (or similar) mean that
> does appear after the return value of quine() but not after the result of
> quine?

All R functions have environments.  This is not printed when the function
is printed if and only if the environment is the user's workspace.
The number is a Hex address of the environment, and you will see it when 
functions are defined or generated inside functions.

> c) is there a better way to check if two functions are identical than the
> way suggested above?

?identical

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
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