[Rd] should base R have a piping operator ?

John Mount
2019-10-05T14:59:27Z

Actually, base R already has a pipe fairly close to the one you describe:
->.;

	iris ->.; head(.) ->.; dim(.)
	# [1] 6 5

I've called it the Bizarro pipe (
http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2016/12/magrittrs-doppelganger/
<http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2016/12/magrittrs-doppelganger/> ), and
for some reason we chickened out and didn't spend time on it in the dot pipe
paper ( https://journal.r-project.org/archive/2018/RJ-2018-042/index.html
<https://journal.r-project.org/archive/2018/RJ-2018-042/index.html> ).

For documentation Bizarro pipe has the advantage that one can work out how it
works from the application itself, with out reference to a defining function.

> On Oct 5, 2019, at 7:34 AM, Ant F <antoine.fabri at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear R-devel,
>
> The most popular piping operator sits in the package `magrittr` and is used
> by a huge amount of users, and imported /reexported by more and more
> packages too.
>
> Many workflows don't even make much sense without pipes nowadays, so
the
> examples in the doc will use pipes, as do the README, vignettes etc. I
> believe base R could have a piping operator so packages can use a pipe in
> their code or doc and stay dependency free.
>
> I don't suggest an operator based on complex heuristics, instead I
suggest
> a very simple and fast one (>10 times than magrittr in my tests) :
>
> `%.%` <- function (e1, e2) {
>  eval(substitute(e2), envir = list(. = e1), enclos = parent.frame())
> }
>
> iris %.% head(.) %.% dim(.)
> #> [1] 6 5
>
> The difference with magrittr is that the dots must all be explicit (which
> sits with the choice of the name), and that special magrittr features such
> as assignment in place and building functions with `. %>% head() %>%
dim()`
> are not supported.
>
> Edge cases are not surprising:
>
> ```
> x <- "a"
> x %.% quote(.)
> #> .
> x %.% substitute(.)
> #> [1] "a"
>
> f1 <- function(y) function() eval(quote(y))
> f2 <- x %.% f1(.)
> f2()
> #> [1] "a"
> ```
>
> Looking forward for your thoughts on this,
>
> Antoine
>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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---------------
John Mount
http://www.win-vector.com/ <http://www.win-vector.com/>
Our book: Practical Data Science with R
https://www.manning.com/books/practical-data-science-with-r-second-edition
<http://www.manning.com/zumel/>