> > assign('TRUE', FALSE) > > TRUE > [1] TRUE > > get('TRUE') > [1] FALSE > > but it is probably a different story.
The parser converts the text TRUE to the value true, not to the name 'TRUE', just as it converts the text 1 to the value one, not the name '1', before handing off the parse tree to the evaluator, so scoping rules are not relevant. You can also use backquotes to force the TRUE or 1 to be interpreted as names so that scoping rules are used. R> class(parse(text="TRUE")[[1]]) [1] "logical" R> class(parse(text="`TRUE`")[[1]]) [1] "name" R> class(parse(text="1")[[1]]) [1] "numeric" R> class(parse(text="`1`")[[1]]) [1] "name" Bill Dunlap Spotfire, TIBCO Software wdunlap tibco.com > -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On > Behalf > Of Yihui Xie > Sent: Friday, June 28, 2013 7:12 PM > To: Rolf Turner > Cc: r-help@r-project.org; John Fox > Subject: Re: [R] Lexical scoping is not what I expect > > I just realized this was also possible: > > > assign('TRUE', FALSE) > > TRUE > [1] TRUE > > get('TRUE') > [1] FALSE > > but it is probably a different story. > > Regards, > Yihui > -- > Yihui Xie <xieyi...@gmail.com> > Phone: 206-667-4385 Web: http://yihui.name > Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle > > > On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 6:30 PM, Rolf Turner <rolf.tur...@xtra.co.nz> wrote: > > On 29/06/13 02:54, John Fox wrote: > >> > >> Dear Duncan and Steve, > >> > >> Since Steve's example raises it, I've never understood why it's legal to > >> change the built-in global "constants" in R, including T and F. That just > >> seems to me to set a trap for users. Why not treat these as reserved > >> symbols, like TRUE, Inf, etc.? > > > > > > I rather enjoy being able to set > > > > pi <- 3 > > > > :-) > > > > cheers, > > > > Rolf Turner > > ______________________________________________ > 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. ______________________________________________ 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.