From ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk  Thu Oct 16 06:54:52 2008
From: ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk (Prof Brian Ripley)
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:54:52 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [Rd] dos-style line endings in .Rbuildignore result in files
 not being excluded
In-Reply-To: <20081014173149.15498.qmail@s461.sureserver.com>
References: <20081014173149.15498.qmail@s461.sureserver.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.0810141838430.28969@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>

On Tue, 14 Oct 2008, Nathan Coulter wrote:

>>  -------Original Message-------
>>  From: Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>
>>  Subject: Re: [Rd] dos-style line endings in .Rbuildignore result in files not being excluded
>>  Sent: 2008-10-14 12:59
>>
>>  On Tue, 14 Oct 2008, Nathan Coulter wrote:
>>
>> > Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>> >
>> >> But to the point: how often do people get DOS-style files on a
>> >> Unix-alike? You have to work pretty hard to do this, and there comes a
>> >> point at which complicating R to workaround wrongly encoded files is not
>> >> worth the trouble.  Let's see if anyone else reports having done this.
>> >>
>> >
>> > In my experience, this is a common occurrence.  Granted, foreign line
>> > delimiters are less common in a configuration file like .Rbuildignore, but
>> > they
>> > have been the culprit more than once in package problems I have encountered.
>> > think functionality like Python's universal newlines would be a big win for
>> > R.
>>
>>  But R *does* have 'universal newlines' on its connections, and has for
>>  many years.
>>
>
> I'm suggesting that Python might be a better choice than perl for auxiliary
> scripts because these details are handled under the hood.

You've completely missed the point: R would be a better choice than 
either.

When R was first released it was slow to start up and not good at 
scripting.  But that's no longer true and the plan is to replace Perl 
scripts with R scripts.  Making the developers learn an extra scripting 
language (Python, and a most un-R-like one at that) just to get a feature 
R already has would be ludicrous.

>
> -- 
> Nathan Coulter
>
>
>
>
>>  -------Original Message-------
>>  From: Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>
>>  Subject: Re: [Rd] dos-style line endings in .Rbuildignore result in files not being excluded
>>  Sent: 2008-10-14 12:59
>>
>>  On Tue, 14 Oct 2008, Nathan Coulter wrote:
>>
>> > Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>> >
>> >> But to the point: how often do people get DOS-style files on a
>> >> Unix-alike? You have to work pretty hard to do this, and there comes a
>> >> point at which complicating R to workaround wrongly encoded files is not
>> >> worth the trouble.??Let's see if anyone else reports having done this.
>> >>
>> >
>> > In my experience, this is a common occurrence.??Granted, foreign line
>> > delimiters are less common in a configuration file like .Rbuildignore, but
>> > they
>> > have been the culprit more than once in package problems I have encountered.
>> > think functionality like Python's universal newlines would be a big win for
>> > R.
>>
>>  But R *does* have 'universal newlines' on its connections, and has for
>>  many years.
>>
>>  We are talking about a Perl script here, not R.
>>
>> > One of the big draws in a programming language like Python is its claim to
>> > being portable, and universal newlines are a critical part of that
>> > functionality.??Mac-style newline delimiters are surfacing more often these
>> > days as well, and the best place to sort this all out would be in the
>> > built-in
>> > file manipulation functions.
>> > --
>> > Nathan Coulter
>> > Computer Programmer
>> >
>>
>>  --
>>  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
>>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

-- 
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] dos-style line endings in .Rbuildignore result in files not being excluded
Prof Brian Ripley