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

[Henrik Bengtsson]

To save my fingers and still being on the safe side, I always do:

> !0
[1] TRUE
> !1
[1] FALSE

;)  ...still hackable though.

/Henrik

On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 5:25 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> 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
>
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