From gunter.berton at gene.com  Mon Oct 21 16:47:54 2013
From: gunter.berton at gene.com (Bert Gunter)
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 07:47:54 -0700
Subject: [Rd] Possible tweak to R intro - was RE: [R] Subseting a
 data.frame -
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Thank you.

I stand corrected.

Cheers,
Bert

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 1:17 AM, Prof Brian Ripley
<ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 18/10/2013 15:12, S Ellison wrote:
>>
>> Transferred from R-help:
>>>>
>>>> From: S Ellison
>>>> Subsetting using subset() is perhaps the most natural way of
>>>> subsetting data frames; perhaps a line or two and an example could
>>>> usefully be included in the 'Working with data frames' section of the R
>>>> Intro?
>>>
>>>
>>> From: Bert Gunter [mailto:gunter.berton at gene.com]
>>> The R Intro Manual was largely or entirely the work of Bill Venables
>>> some years ago. So it is not really a part of R's maintained document
>>> system and has thus not been kept up to date with changes like the
>>> convenience function, subset(), which is basically a wrapper for "[]"
>>> .
>>>
>>> This is not to say that your suggestion is not worthwhile, only to
>>> explain why it probably won't be acted upon.
>
>
> No, this is deliberate and R-intro is kept up-to-date (although it remains
> an introduction, not a full manual).
>
> Some of us think convenience functions such as subset() and transform() were
> mistakes, not least as we see the problems they cause when people try to use
> them in functions and packages.  Sooner or later you will need to learn to
> use indexing, and knowing about two systems with different scoping rules is
> too confusing for quite a few R users.
>
>>
>> It's trivial enough that I could offer a 3-line patch if someone has time
>> and inclination to add it...
>>
>> S Ellison
>
>
> --
> 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



-- 

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics

(650) 467-7374



[Rd] Possible tweak to R intro - was RE: [R] Subseting a data.frame -
Bert Gunter