R help - Oct 2008 - for loop question Documentation and its application for calculating euclidean distance on MDS ordination axis scores

?for doesn't return anything help.search("for") doesn't return
anything-
Is the for loop so prevelant in computer programing that the
documentation is implicit or is R paradigm to discourage the use of
the for loop.

I will post data probably tonight, but here is my problem.  I have
preformed an MDS on a set of data.  I have the scores of the four axes
that
are the optimal solution.  I want to calculate the euclidean distance
between time steps of the ordination.  My thought is to use a for
loop-
calculate distance march to april then calculate the distance from
april to may  ...  Is this the proper way of going about this

              axis1    axis2    axis3      axis4
march            3         4          6            3
april               5         7          8            5
may               7         3         1             9
.....

thanks

Stephen

The data is at home and I will post it once I have fooled around with
the for loop - if I can not figure it out, but this is the general set
up of the problem
-- 
Stephen Sefick
Research Scientist
Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy

Let's not spend our time and resources thinking about things that are
so little or so large that all they really do for us is puff us up and
make us feel like gods.  We are mammals, and have not exhausted the
annoying little problems of being mammals.

								-K. Mullis

One must write ?"for" presumably since for is a reserved word in R.

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 9:39 AM, stephen sefick <ssefick at gmail.com>
wrote:
> ?for doesn't return anything help.search("for") doesn't
return anything-
> Is the for loop so prevelant in computer programing that the
> documentation is implicit or is R paradigm to discourage the use of
> the for loop.
>
> I will post data probably tonight, but here is my problem.  I have
> preformed an MDS on a set of data.  I have the scores of the four axes
> that
> are the optimal solution.  I want to calculate the euclidean distance
> between time steps of the ordination.  My thought is to use a for
> loop-
> calculate distance march to april then calculate the distance from
> april to may  ...  Is this the proper way of going about this
>
>              axis1    axis2    axis3      axis4
> march            3         4          6            3
> april               5         7          8            5
> may               7         3         1             9
> .....
>
> thanks
>
> Stephen
>
> The data is at home and I will post it once I have fooled around with
> the for loop - if I can not figure it out, but this is the general set
> up of the problem
> --
> Stephen Sefick
> Research Scientist
> Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy
>
> Let's not spend our time and resources thinking about things that are
> so little or so large that all they really do for us is puff us up and
> make us feel like gods.  We are mammals, and have not exhausted the
> annoying little problems of being mammals.
>
>                                                                -K. Mullis
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

Actually, help.search("for") finds

Control(base)           Control Flow

which is exactly where 'for' is documented. In general, if you want
the manual page of reserved words, then you'll have to quote them:

?"for"

Gabor

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 3:39 PM, stephen sefick <ssefick at gmail.com>
wrote:
> ?for doesn't return anything help.search("for") doesn't
return anything-
> Is the for loop so prevelant in computer programing that the
> documentation is implicit or is R paradigm to discourage the use of
> the for loop.
>
[...]

-- 
Gabor Csardi <Gabor.Csardi at unil.ch>     UNIL DGM

> I will post data probably tonight, but here is my problem.  I have
> preformed an MDS on a set of data.  I have the scores of the four axes
> that
> are the optimal solution.  I want to calculate the euclidean distance
> between time steps of the ordination.  
  See ?dist  for a much faster solution ...

  [saying a little more to make Gmane happy]
  I wouldn't say for loops are "discouraged", but there are
often faster ways to do things in R.

 Ben Bolker