I vaguely recall thinking with such convoluted constructs when
switching from Matlab to R. The lack of generic data structures such
as lists makes you define variable names that you can identify and
manipulate. There are structures in Matlab, but I think they are much
less used than lists in R.
I was wondering earlier how to help newcomers understand the
limitations of this strange and unnecessary construct without going
through the details of each particular example that comes up in the r-
help list. Perhaps a simple generic and illustrative example in the R
wiki? (say, (i) list some data files in a directory, (ii)load into
data.frames, (iii)manipulate some columns, (iv)store in a list,
(v)manipulate the list, (vi)plot some results).
Now, how would we go about naming that entry...? Perhaps 'A beginner's
assignment'
baptiste
On 20 Apr 2009, at 22:44, Stavros Macrakis wrote:
Judging from the traffic on this mailing list, a lot of R beginners
are trying to write things like
assign( paste( "myvar", i), ...)
where they really should probably be writing
myvar[i] <- ...
Do we have any idea where this bizarre habit comes from?
-s
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_____________________________
Baptiste Auguié
School of Physics
University of Exeter
Stocker Road,
Exeter, Devon,
EX4 4QL, UK
Phone: +44 1392 264187
http://newton.ex.ac.uk/research/emag
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