[R] questions on some operators in R

[Horace Tso]

Certainly not. I'm just too lazy.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: David Winsemius [mailto:dwinsemius at comcast.net] 
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2010 2:57 PM
To: Horace Tso
Cc: Erik Iverson; Greg Snow; r-help
Subject: Re: [R] questions on some operators in R


On Jun 18, 2010, at 5:15 PM, Horace Tso wrote:

> You still couldn't sway me into the <- camp. '=' is better for yet  
> two more reasons,
>
> 1. it requires one keystroke, rather than two,
>
> 2. to type '<', one has to hold Shift then the ',' key, so it's a  
> total of three strokes all together.
>
> In a typical script, you have hundreds of assignment statements.  
> Those extra keystroke translate into quite a bit more wear on your  
> fingers.

If you are so productive that the rate-limiting step in your  
statistical programming is the number of times you need to type "<-",  
then your sample(c("MacArthur Award", "Nobel Prize", "Chambers  
Award"), 1, prob=c(0.1,0.1, 0.8) )  , will surely be granted in  
rnorm(1, 8)  years.

-- 
David.
>
> H
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Erik Iverson [mailto:eriki at ccbr.umn.edu]
> Sent: Friday, June 18, 2010 1:23 PM
> To: Greg Snow
> Cc: Horace Tso; li li; r-help
> Subject: Re: [R] questions on some operators in R
>
>
>
> Greg Snow wrote:
>> Your example could also be used as an argument against allowing '='  
>> as a shortcut for <- after all if you are used to using <- (rather  
>> than =) then you will see the problem with x<-2 right off.  But if  
>> we eliminate <- and only use =, then how do you do:
>>
>>> mean( x <- rnorm(100) )
>>
>> Or
>>
>>> system.time( output <- longrunningfunction(args) )
>>
>> Is
>>
>>> mean( { x=rnorm(100) } )
>>
>> Really and improvement?
>
> Certainly not in my mind!
>
> For me, here is certainly an undefinable aesthetic appeal to the '<-'
> assignment operator.  The visual requirement of seeing '<-' for me  
> is so
> strong, that even when running example code from this list, I must
> replace all assignments done with '=' to '<-' before submitting them  
> to
> R! I've also noticed that there seems to be an association between  
> using
> '=' for assignments and writing code with 0 spaces per line in it.  Of
> course, I insist on fixing that before running the code, too.  :)
>
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David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT