Dear users,
Regarding the number of keystrokes, you guys should not forget that not
everybody has a QWERTY keyboard, and therefore the number of strokes
isn't the same for everybody. On an AZERTY keyboard (French), "<" is
written without pressing SHIFT, as is "=". On a QWERTZ (German) "="
requires SHIFT while "<" does not! And there are also differences with
Mac keyboards. So the argument of the number of keystrokes cannot be
used choose "<" over "=" or vice versa.
I'm still quite new to R (I started a few months ago), and I've learned
to use the "<-" assignment operator. I've directly found it intuitive
since the arrow really shows the direction of assignment. I also
had/have to train some students in my team and it looks to me that they
are less confused when they use "<-" to assign and "=" for arguments
within a function call. I think that when you learn, it's better to have
different operators for different things.
The problem might be more for people who used other programming
languages, where the assignment operators are different. But hey, there
are also people who start learning with R!!
I'll stick to "<-" :)
Ivan
Le 6/19/2010 05:51, Greg Snow a écrit :
That is really one reason stated in 2 pieces.
If you really care more about saving characters or key strokes over clarity of
expression then you should really be using APL
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)) (though I think APL was
part of the inspiration for<-, though when S was first created that was a single
key stroke). And if you are really concerned with wear on your fingers then you need
to switch to the Dvorak keyboard
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard), though<- is still 3 key
presses, but you don't need to move your fingers as much (I actually switched to
Dvorak to cure myself looking at my fingers, but now I can type much faster than I
ever did on QWERTY).
If you want to use "=", that is your decision, R-core decided to add it a while back (but I
believe most if not all of them still use "<-"). I am more concerned that people
understand the what are shortcuts and what they are shortcuts for and are aware of possible problems
from using shortcuts rather than the more versatile tools that they are shortcuts for. The longest
distance between 2 points is a shortcut.
--
Ivan CALANDRA
PhD Student
University of Hamburg
Biozentrum Grindel und Zoologisches Museum
Abt. Säugetiere
Martin-Luther-King-Platz 3
D-20146 Hamburg, GERMANY
+49(0)40 42838 6231
ivan.calan...@uni-hamburg.de
**********
http://www.for771.uni-bonn.de
http://webapp5.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/mammals/eng/mitarbeiter.php
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