[R] [R-pkgs] New package "list" for analyzing list surveyexperiments

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "RR" == Raubertas, Richard <richard_raubertas at merck.com>
>>>>>     on Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:46:41 -0400 writes:

    RR> I agree that 'list' is a terrible package name, but only
    RR> secondarily because it is a data type.  The primary
    RR> problem is that it is so generic

    RR> as to be almost totally uninformative about what the
    RR> package does.

    RR> For some reason package writers seem to prefer maximally
    RR> uninformative names for their packages.  To take some
    RR> examples of recently announced packages, can anyone
    RR> guess what packages 'FDTH', 'rtv', or 'lavaan' do?  Why
    RR> the aversion to informative names along the lines of
    RR> 'Freq_dist_and_histogram', 'RandomTimeVariables', and
    RR> 'Latent_Variable_Analysis', respectively?

Hmm, apart from the other answers ("cutesiness", "tradition",
"keyboard") about which I agree to some extent, there's the 
related question of what package names are / should be allowed.

Interestingly, I haven't found this information as quickly as I
expected {first looking at   help(package.skeleton)  as that
	  could be the way to create your very first package},
I've quickly switched to the "Writing R Extensions" manual,
and there, in Chapter "Creating R Packages",
you have to search forward to  

  > 1.1.1 The `DESCRIPTION' file
  > ----------------------------
  > 
  > The `DESCRIPTION' file contains basic information about the package in
  > the following format:
  > 
  >           Package: pkgname
  >           Version: 0.5-1
  >           Date: 2004-01-01
  >           Title: My First Collection of Functions

  [............]

  >    The `DESCRIPTION' file should be written entirely in ASCII for
  > maximal portability.
  > 
  >    The `Package' and `Version' fields give the name and the version of
  > the package, respectively.  The name should consist of letters,
  > numbers, and the dot character and start with a letter.  
  > The version is a sequence of at least
    ............
    ............

So, the package name is currently limited to the regular expression

    [A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9.]+

     {assuming that "A-Za-z" really gives R's  c(LETTERS, letters),
       which is not true in quite a few locales}

and in particular "_" are not allowed.

If you are really interested in more, you should start
discussing the matter on R-devel (rather than R-help).
Note that the "_" is currently used as separator between package
name and package version in some contexts, and allowing "_" be
part of the package name itself may need more changes in the R
project infrastructure (including package repositories and their
tools !!) than we (R Core) would want to
undertake (*and* maintain (!)),
but as I say, R-devel is the place to propose and discuss
changes to R.

Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich

    RR> R.Raubertas

    >> -----Original Message----- From:
    >> r-help-bounces at r-project.org
    >> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of
    >> Jeffrey J. Hallman Sent: Monday, July 12, 2010 10:09 AM
    >> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch Subject: Re: [R] [R-pkgs]
    >> New package "list" for analyzing list surveyexperiments
    >> 
    >> I know nothing about your package, but "list" is a
    >> terrible name for it, as "list" is also the name of a
    >> data type in R.
    >> -- 
    >> Jeff
    >>