[R] return inconsistency?

Jeff Newmiller
2025-04-30T14:01:35Z

The R antibugging practice here is to not use the return function. The
expression on the last line of the function is automatically the return value of
the function. Some people use return within conditionals in the function, but
when I have conditional execution flow I prefer to simply assign alternate
return values to a local variable along different execution paths and require
all execution paths to reach the end of the function where that variable name is
alone on the last line.

On April 30, 2025 2:15:02 AM PDT, Ralf Goertz via R-help <r-help at
r-project.org> wrote:
>I made a stupid error when programming a function. I used
>
>> return(OR^2+6*OR+1)/(OR*se^2)
>
>Being parenthesis blind it took me half an hour to find the reason for
>the nonsensical results I got. I should have written
>
>> return((OR^2+6*OR+1)/(OR*se^2))
>
>Having said that why is the first variant (which returns the value of
>the numerator only) not a syntax error? I would have expected R to
>report something like
>
>> Error: unexpected '/' in "return(OR^2+6*OR+1)/"
>
>If this is not an error what is its purpose?
>
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--
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.