Mea culpa, mea culpa John Kane Kingston ON Canada -----Original Message----- From: john.archie.mckown at gmail.com Sent: Sun, 15 Feb 2015 10:20:39 -0600 To: murdoch.duncan at gmail.com Subject: Re: [R] Noob question re: writing while loops on one line On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 9:54 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote: On 15/02/2015 10:08 AM, Sun Shine wrote: > Thanks John: understanding it as a line return makes sense! But it's not right.? This is one statement, and it returns the value 3: 1 + 2 This is an error: 1 + ; 2 The semicolon is a statement separator, not a line return. Technically speaking a semicolon is a statement terminator, not a statement separator. In the case of the R language, that is a "nit". In the case of Pascal, it is a big difference. Duncan Murdoch This is one reason why I _always_ use the semi-colon. It is _never_ really wrong to do so. It may be _unnecessary_ in some case. It is also why I always use <- as the assignment operator (well, that and because I like it from my APL background). If there are two ways to express something, and one of them is _always_ correct whereas the other _might not_ be correct in some cases, then I think doing the former is simply "better form". But, then, I'm anal about other things to. And that doesn't apply to interactive use. I don't terminate my interactive statements with a semi-colon all the time. Just most of the time. Of course, I'm a touch typist too and so it is not really much of a problem for me. -- He's about as useful as a wax frying pan. 10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone Maranatha! <>< John McKown ____________________________________________________________ FREE 3D EARTH SCREENSAVER - Watch the Earth right on your desktop!