On Tue, 03 Oct 2000 10:55:28 +0000, Alberto Murta <amurta at ipimar.pt> wrote:> And objectively, it's a fact that "<-" >makes the code easier to read than "_".I don't follow this argument. Underscore isn't used anywhere else in the language, so when you see one, you know it's an assignment. On the other hand, both "<" and "-" have multiple other uses. This leads to lots of possibilities for confusion: x <--5 x < -5 x <- 5 are easily confused, whereas x _-5 x < -5 x _ 5 are not. (Of course, I actually prefer the Pascalian :=, but I realize that puts me in a double minority :-). Duncan Murdoch -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Duncan Murdoch wrote:> I don't follow this argument. Underscore isn't used anywhere else in > the language, so when you see one, you know it's an assignment. On > the other hand, both "<" and "-" have multiple other uses. This leads > to lots of possibilities for confusion: > > x <--5 > x < -5 > x <- 5Those are classic examples. Nevertheless, "<-" is more appealing visually than "_" as an assignment operator, mainly because "_" is used in file and variable names in other programming languages.> (Of course, I actually prefer the Pascalian :=, but I realize that > puts me in a double minority :-). >Here I agree with you. I think that future releases of R should have "=" as the assignement operator, just like the last version of S. Alberto -- __________________ Alberto G. Murta ______________________ IPIMAR - Institute of Fisheries and Sea Research Avenida de Brasilia; 1449-006 Lisboa; Portugal Tel:351 213027062; Fax:351 213015948; http://www.ipimar.pt -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/attachments/20001003/f31ea381/attachment.html