[R] The use of F for False and T for True

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 17/11/2008 8:03 AM, hadley wickham wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 7:41 PM, Simon Blomberg <s.blomberg1 at uq.edu.au> wrote:
>> It is better programming practice to use FALSE for false and TRUE for
>> true, and not F and T. This is because it is quite legal to do this:
>>
>> T <- FALSE
>> F <- TRUE
> 
> It may be better programming practice, but is it better interactive
> data analysis practice?  R isn't just a programming language, and
> there are lots of good reasons to provide shortcuts that reduce
> typing.  It's very easy to forget that most people can't touch type at
> a decent speed, and every key press less helps them get their ideas
> from their head to the computer faster.

That would be an argument for T and F being the reserved words (as I 
think they are in S-PLUS).  But since it's so easy to use T or F as a 
variable, the problems caused by using them as TRUE or FALSE are not 
negligible -- look at the original question in this thread, which was 
likely caused by using F as a variable.

Duncan Murdoch