[R] A suggestion regarding multiple replies

[(Ted Harding)]

On 15-Nov-03 Ted Harding wrote:
> However, personally I like the way questions are bounced around between
> people. and answers are devoped "conversationally", as it were, and I
> think a lot would be lost if this were not to happen. On the whole,
> I welcome the load!
> 
> R strikes me as somewhat special amongst languages in that there are
> a lot of hidden subtleties, which sometimes are only pointed out by
> the few people who are really familiar with them. At present this
> happens on-list and usually very promptly, and this timely intervention
> puts wrong ideas right before they get too deeply embedded; this
> benefit would tend to vanish if a "summarise to the list" policy
> were adopted.

And the following (in today's "?for" thread) is a perfect example
of what I mean:
===============================================================
> From: Peter Dalgaard <p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk>
> To: Angel <angel_lul at hotmail.com>, r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] ?for
> Date: 17 Nov 2003 11:49:37 +0100
> 
> Further hint: ? is an operator, syntactically similar to + and -.
> You can apply operators to the result of a for loop. Consider for
> example
> 
> x <- 1; - for (i in 1:10) x <- x * i
> 
> (? has special semantics, but that is not noticed at parse time).
===============================================================

This is just the sort of thing I love to see posted to the list,
since it is an eye-opener. In fact, to really see what goes on
I had to rub my eyes as follows:

  - for (i in 1:10) print(i)

and I'm posting it hoping that it will enlighten some other people.

Best wishes to all,
Ted.


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Date: 17-Nov-03                                       Time: 15:08:38
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