From smckinney at bccrc.ca  Sat Nov  5 02:28:03 2011
From: smckinney at bccrc.ca (Steven McKinney)
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2011 18:28:03 -0700
Subject: [Rd] Error in documentation of "merge"
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org]
> On Behalf Of Kasper Daniel Hansen
> Sent: November-04-11 5:26 AM
> To: peter dalgaard
> Cc: r-devel at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Rd] Error in documentation of "merge"
> 
> On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 8:20 AM, peter dalgaard <pdalgd at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Nov 4, 2011, at 13:11 , Rainer M Krug wrote:
> >
> >> Hi
> >>
> >> there seems to be an error in the documentation of the "merge" function:
> >>
> >> Arguments:
> >>
> >> ? ?x, y: data frames, or objects to be coerced to one.
> >>
> >> ?by, by.x, by.y: specifications of the common columns. ?See ?Details?.
> >>
> >> ? ? all: logical; ?all = L? is shorthand for ?all.x = L? and ?all.y =
> >> ? ? ? ? ?L?.
> >>
> >>
> >> The "L" should be a T or a TRUE.
> >
> >
> > I think it's on purpose: L indicates a logical value, TRUE _or_ FALSE.
> 
> I agree with Peter here.  But it did make me pause the first time I
> read it on the help page years ago and furthermore, I think this is at
> least the second time where this particular formulation has been
> questioned on R-devel.  I am not an index of R help pages, but I
> cannot recall seeing the 'L' as shorthand for logical.  I suggest
> changing the formulation since it seems that several people have been
> confused, for example by writing out 'logical' instead of 'L'.

Seconded, as L does have another use as well now in numeric constants

> 1L
[1] 1



Steven McKinney


> 
> Kasper
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel



[Rd] Error in documentation of "merge"
Steven McKinney