x <- 0; names(x) <- "recursive" I am saying more plainly: With 'x' above, deparse(x, control = "all") is wrong in R devel. -------------------------------------------- On Sat, 16/12/17, Suharto Anggono Suharto Anggono <suharto_anggono at yahoo.com> wrote: Subject: Nice names in deparse To: r-devel at r-project.org Date: Saturday, 16 December, 2017, 11:09 PM Tags (argument names) in call to 'list' becomes names of the result. It is not necessarily so with call to 'c'. The default method of 'c' has 'recursive' and 'use.names' arguments. In R devel r73778, with x <- 0; names(x) <- "recursive"? , dput(x) or even dput(x, control = "all") gives c(recursive = 0) However, actual result of c(recursive 0) is NULL. Also with x <- 0; names(x) <- "recursive"? , dput(x, control = c("keepNA", "keepInteger", "showAttributes")) in R devel r73778 gives structure(c(0), .Names = "recursive") The 'control' is suggested by an example for output as in R < 3.5.0. However, the output is slightly different from dput(x) in R 3.3.2: structure(0, .Names = "recursive") Part of NEWS item related with "niceNames" control option: as.character(list( c (one = 1))) now includes the name, as as.character(list(list(one = 1))) has always done. Please reconsider. As as.numeric(list(c(one = 1))) gives 1 , I expect that as.character(list(c(one = "1"))) gives "1" . It does in R devel r73778. Why does as.character(list(c(one = 1))) give "c(one = 1)" ? as.numeric(list(c(one = "1"))) gives 1 . list(list(one = 1)) is not quite the same. as.numeric(list(list(one = 1))) gives NA .