[R] R annoyances

[Taylor, Z Todd]

On Friday, May 20, 2005 11:29 AM, Jari Oksanen wrote:

> The most beautiful thing in old R (I started with 0.63) was 
> that it was 
> in the elegant unix tradition: all lower case and point (full stop, 
> period, whatever) in places where you needed it. It is 
> unfortunate that 
> other languages are creeping in and old neat constructions 
> are replaces 
> with C++ style uGliNess. There was a grace period when switching from 
> beautiful (fair) print.coefmat to ugLy printCoefmat, but some changes 
> were more abrupt (package.description). I have a feeling that the 
> recent trashing of names.dist (with a lot of code breakage 
> even in base 
> R) was caused by the same kind of political correctness.
> 
> Please Mr R, keep it like it used to be...

BecauseIt'sFridayI'llJoinIntoThisTiredOldDebate.TheUseOfMixedCase
UglinessToDistinguishBetween"Words"InObjectNamesIsIndeedAn
Abomination.

It_is_much_easier,_and_demonstrably_so_I_would_say,_to_use
some_kind_of_real_separator_between_"words."

S.and.R.have.historically.encouraged.a.different.separator
than.most.other.languages,.but.the.principle.is.the.same.

And the double benefit is that it leaves case available for
other good uses, such as indicating an object's scope:

    local.var
    Class.Data
    GLOBAL.SETTING

--Todd
-- 
Z. Todd Taylor
Senior Development Engineer
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Why is it "after dark," not "after light"?