[R] Strange parsing behavior of an else condition

[Christian Lederer]

Dear R users,

can anybody explain the reason, why the first piece of code
below gives a parsing error, while the other two variations
work?

# Gives a parsing error
x <- 1
if (x < 0)
  {
    y <- 1
  }
else # Error occurs at this line
  {
    y <- -1
  }


# This works
x <- 1
{
  if (x < 0)
    {
      y <- 1
    }
  else
    {
      y <- -1
    }
}

# This works too
x <- 1
if (x < 0)
  {
    y <- 1
  } else
  {
    y <- -1
  }

Christian