hi, i'm new to R and i discovered that for years people are complaining about lacking of very basic and hopefully simple things, like multiline comment, some marker for 'command doesn't end at this line' etc. so my question is why some of those things are still not implemented? is it because of compatibility/policy reasons? is R syntax done and any extensions are forbidden? or it's simply because everyone is doing something more interesting? if it's the second case then do such pull requests/patches have a chance of being accepted? -- regards, piotrek
> comment, some marker for 'command doesn't end at this line' etc.That is not necessary since R supports multi-line commands without the need for marking continuation.> R syntax done and any extensions are forbidden?R is maintained and extended by the R code team[1] who decide on the GNU R project. Suggestions (or sometimes patches) are posted on this list and may or may not be implemented (but please check that your suggestion/question is indeed new by searching the list archive). R is maintained on an svn repository and doesn't support pull requests in the same way git does. Since R is free in the GNU sense you can always define your own local version, see e.g. [2].> i'm new to Rwelcome, and have fun! best, Mark [1] https://www.r-project.org/contributors.html [2] https://github.com/radfordneal/pqR Op za 19 sep. 2015 om 04:02 schreef Piotr Turski <piotr.turski at gmail.com>:> hi, > > i'm new to R and i discovered that for years people are complaining > about lacking of very basic and hopefully simple things, like multiline > comment, some marker for 'command doesn't end at this line' etc. > > so my question is why some of those things are still not implemented? is > it because of compatibility/policy reasons? is R syntax done and any > extensions are forbidden? or it's simply because everyone is doing > something more interesting? > if it's the second case then do such pull requests/patches have a chance > of being accepted? > > -- > regards, > piotrek > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
Mark van der Loo <mark.vanderloo <at> gmail.com> writes:> > > comment, some marker for 'command doesn't end at this line' etc. > > That is not necessary since R supports multi-line commands > without the need > for marking continuation. > > > R syntax done and any extensions are forbidden? > > R is maintained and extended by the R code team[1] who decide > on the GNU R > project. Suggestions (or sometimes patches) are posted on this > list and may > or may not be implemented (but please check that your suggestion/question > is indeed new by searching the list archive). R is maintained on an svn > repository and doesn't support pull requests in the same way git does. > Since R is free in the GNU sense you can always define your own local > version, see e.g. [2]. > > > i'm new to R > > welcome, and have fun! > > best, > Mark > > [1] https://www.r-project.org/contributors.html > [2] https://github.com/radfordneal/pqR >You might find the discussion at http://bit.ly/1ip1S2G (StackOverflow "proposing feature requests to the r core team") useful. For practical purposes, I would say R syntax *is* closed, because any changes to the syntax would have to (1) be implementable without unreasonable effort by the R Core members (ideally by extremely high-quality contributed code) (2) not break backward compatibility in any way, including the 7000ish packages currently on CRAN and 2000+ packages on BioConductor, which represent the tip of the iceberg of deployed R code ... As you say, multi-line comments and multi-line commands have been discussed many times, but most existing R users have already gotten used to the existing workarounds (e.g. using smart editors or an if (FALSE) { ... }) see also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1231195/multiline-comment-workarounds Ben Bolker Ben Bolker