From murdoch@dunc@n @end|ng |rom gm@||@com  Sat Aug 10 02:23:28 2019
From: murdoch@dunc@n @end|ng |rom gm@||@com (Duncan Murdoch)
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2019 20:23:28 -0400
Subject: [Rd] Underscores in package names
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On 09/08/2019 4:37 p.m., Gabriel Becker wrote:
> Duncan,
> 
> 
> On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 1:17 PM Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com 
> <mailto:murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     On 09/08/2019 2:41 p.m., Gabriel Becker wrote:
>      > Note that this proposal would make mypackage_2.3.1 a valid
>     *package name*,
>      > whose corresponding tarball name might be mypackage_2.3.1_2.3.2
>     after a
>      > patch. Yes its a silly example, but why allow that kind of ambiguity?
>      >
>     CRAN already has a package named "FuzzyNumbers.Ext.2", whose tarball is
>     FuzzyNumbers.Ext.2_3.2.tar.gz, so I think we've already lost that game.
> 
> 
> I suppose technically 2 is a valid version number for a package (?) so I 
> suppose you have me there. But as Ben pointed out while I was writing 
> this, all I can really say is that in practice they read to me (as 
> someone who has administered R on a large cluster and written 
> build-system software for it) as substantially different levels of 
> ambiguity. I do acknowledge, as Ben does, that yes a more complex 
> regular expression/splitting algorithm can be written that would handle 
> the more general package names. I just don't personally see a motivation 
> that justifies changing something this fundamental (even if it is both 
> narrow and was initially more or less arbitrarily chosen) about R at 
> this late date.
> 
> I guess at the end of the day, I guess what I'm saying is that breaking 
> and changing things is sometimes good, but if we're going to rock the 
> boat personally I'd want to do so going after bigger wins than this one. 
> Thats just my opinion though.

Sorry, I wasn't clear.  I agree with you.  I was just saying that the 
particular argument based on ugly tarball names isn't the reason.

Duncan Murdoch



[Rd] Underscores in package names
Duncan Murdoch