On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Horace Tso <horace....@pgn.com> 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.
I certainly appreciate the desire to save keystrokes particularly for common tasks. But I wonder, if '=' is the only assignment operator, what is used for formal argument matching? I find being able to distinguish the two makes code clearer (besides that assignment within a function becomes more tedious), and, at least for me, I have less assignment statements than argument matching. It also seems like a great deal of work to change such a fundamental function for the relatively slight potential gain. As a side note, for me it is less keystrokes because using a shortcut, with two keystrokes, I can get ' <- ' which is the assignment plus the space before and after it, which I would add for readability anyways (although I suppose liking spaces in code may just be personal taste). > > H > > -----Original Message----- > From: Erik Iverson [mailto:er...@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. :) > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Joshua Wiley Ph.D. Student Health Psychology University of California, Los Angeles ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
