From ggrothendieck at gmail.com  Sun Jan 29 23:20:59 2006
From: ggrothendieck at gmail.com (Gabor Grothendieck)
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 17:20:59 -0500
Subject: [Rd] [R] help with read.table() function
In-Reply-To: <43DD3D75.6010404@stats.uwo.ca>
References: <20060129162850.73978.qmail@web33204.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<43DCF7E8.2080900@stats.uwo.ca>
	<971536df0601291024n57113e97t3cc938a78a11f495@mail.gmail.com>
	<43DD3D75.6010404@stats.uwo.ca>
Message-ID: <971536df0601291420g5dd9732dl2108a5661705d7e2@mail.gmail.com>

On 1/29/06, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> On 1/29/2006 1:24 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>  > Normally one expects stdin to be the default on command line
>  > programs and something like file.choose to be the default on GUI
>  > programs and this would break that expectation.
>
> We don't currently meet that expectation, so I don't think it would make
> things any worse.  As I mentioned to Brian, I wouldn't change the

II don't think you understood my point.  This is how most software works,
IN GENERAL, so R should be expected to work that way
too.   I don't think not having a default is so bad but having the wrong
default that breaks the stereotype that one expects in all software
is bad.

What could be done is to add something about file.choose to the
error message that one gets when one does read.table("myfile")
and it can't find "myfile".



[Rd] [R] help with read.table() function
Gabor Grothendieck