On 07.03.2011 16:17, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
On 07/03/2011 9:52 AM, Muenchen, Robert A (Bob) wrote:
Hi All,
When I teach an intro workshop on R, I've been minimizing "quote
confusion" by always using quotes around package names in function
calls. For example:
install.packages("Hmisc")
update.packages("Hmisc")
library("Hmisc")
citation("Hmisc")
search() # displays package names in quotes
detach("packages:Hmisc") # just as search displayed it
all look consistent with quotes. They're optional, of course, with
library and detach and I tell them that. But for beginners, it's hard
to remember when they don't need quotes. This perspective continues
with function names in help:
help("mean")
?"mean"
help("if")
?"if"
which avoids the fact that some important topics like control-flow
words (e.g. help(if) ) generate error messages without the quotes. For
help, the quotes make the string a "topic" instead of a name, but that
doesn't seem to block it from finding function names in quotes.
I'm about to go to press with the second edition of R for SAS and SPSS
Users& I'm wondering if there's a downside to this. No other books
I've seen use library("package") or help("function") consistently.
I hope at least my German / Japanese one does (but I'd need to parse it
myself).
As you said, it is more consistent to use quotes here and over the
years, I tried to change all my course material to show versions with
quotes only.
Uwe
Is
there a reason I should avoid it?
The only reasons I can think to avoid that recommendation is that people
might find typing unnecessary quotes to be irritating and they might be
confused when they see unquoted usage elsewhere. Those aren't
particularly strong reasons...
Duncan Murdoch
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