R help - May 2025 - Why is there no macro facility for R?

Colleagues,

At the risk of being flamed, starting a war, being labeled a heretic . . . etc.,
I would like to ask the grey-hairs among the R listserve members a simple
question. Why did the R core team not develop a macro language for R. I
understand that R was designed to be a function-based language, but this does
not rule out having macros as a facility that helps in code development.

Thank you,
John


John David Sorkin M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine;
Associate Director for Biostatistics and Informatics, Baltimore VA Medical
Center Geriatrics Research, Education, and Clinical Center;?
PI?Biostatistics and Informatics Core, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center;
Senior Statistician University of Maryland Center for Vascular Research;

Division of Gerontology and Paliative Care,
10 North Greene Street
GRECC (BT/18/GR)
Baltimore, MD 21201-1524
Cell phone 443-418-5382

John:
1. You might get a better response if you could give at least a couple of
use case examples of what you mean.

2. I have a hazy memory of this being actually discussed on this list ca ~
20 years ago. As I recall, some sort of macro facility may have been
implemented in a package using R's compute-on-the-language features. But I
may err -- and whatever was done (if anything) may be irrelevant to your
query.

Cheers,
Bert

"An educated person is one who can entertain new ideas, entertain others,
and entertain herself."



On Thu, May 22, 2025 at 7:14?PM Sorkin, John <jsorkin at
som.umaryland.edu>
wrote:
> Colleagues,
>
> At the risk of being flamed, starting a war, being labeled a heretic . . .
> etc., I would like to ask the grey-hairs among the R listserve members a
> simple question. Why did the R core team not develop a macro language for
> R. I understand that R was designed to be a function-based language, but
> this does not rule out having macros as a facility that helps in code
> development.
>
> Thank you,
> John
>
>
> John David Sorkin M.D., Ph.D.
> Professor of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine;
> Associate Director for Biostatistics and Informatics, Baltimore VA Medical
> Center Geriatrics Research, Education, and Clinical Center;
> PI Biostatistics and Informatics Core, University of Maryland School of
> Medicine Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center;
> Senior Statistician University of Maryland Center for Vascular Research;
>
> Division of Gerontology and Paliative Care,
> 10 North Greene Street
> GRECC (BT/18/GR)
> Baltimore, MD 21201-1524
> Cell phone 443-418-5382
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> https://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

R is closely modelled on S.  S was always designed to interoperate
well with UNIX tools.
Unix has always had cpp (for c-like languages) and m4
(general-purpose) as outboard macro processors.
Then too, the classic S Blue Book explained how to do "computing on
the language'",
see section 5 of R Language Definition,
so the AST-based macro processor for R is called (drum roll please) R.

On Fri, 23 May 2025 at 14:14, Sorkin, John <jsorkin at som.umaryland.edu>
wrote:
>
> Colleagues,
>
> At the risk of being flamed, starting a war, being labeled a heretic . . .
etc., I would like to ask the grey-hairs among the R listserve members a simple
question. Why did the R core team not develop a macro language for R. I
understand that R was designed to be a function-based language, but this does
not rule out having macros as a facility that helps in code development.
>
> Thank you,
> John
>
>
> John David Sorkin M.D., Ph.D.
> Professor of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine;
> Associate Director for Biostatistics and Informatics, Baltimore VA Medical
Center Geriatrics Research, Education, and Clinical Center;
> PI Biostatistics and Informatics Core, University of Maryland School of
Medicine Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center;
> Senior Statistician University of Maryland Center for Vascular Research;
>
> Division of Gerontology and Paliative Care,
> 10 North Greene Street
> GRECC (BT/18/GR)
> Baltimore, MD 21201-1524
> Cell phone 443-418-5382
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
https://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.