From ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk  Mon Nov 16 17:38:44 2009
From: ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk (Prof Brian Ripley)
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:38:44 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [Rd] n=1 default for random number generators
In-Reply-To: <26374371.post@talk.nabble.com>
References: <26374371.post@talk.nabble.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.0911161634110.14954@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>

On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Richard Cotton wrote:

>
> One tiny thing that would be very nice to have is a default value of n=1 in
> the random number generator functions, enabling, e.g., runif() instead of
> runif(1).  This won't break anyone's existing code and ought to be
> relatively straightforward to do.
>
> Is there anyone in the core team who would be willing to include this
> change?

For those in base R (not all are, of course), if someone makes a 
persuasive case (not just says 'would be very nice to have': e.g. 
produces statistics of usage by a wide group of users showing that is 
a commonly used value of 'n') and supplies a complete patch (to the 
help as well as the code).

> -----
> Regards,
> Richie.
>
> Mathematical Sciences Unit
> HSL


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595



[Rd] n=1 default for random number generators
Prof Brian Ripley