From phgrosje@ulb.ac.be  Fri Nov  8 16:56:14 2002
From: phgrosje@ulb.ac.be (Philippe Grosjean)
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 17:56:14 +0100
Subject: behavior of =
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.4.44.0211080813030.108822-100000@homer40.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <MABBLJDICACNFOLGIHJOIEKMDAAA.phgrosje@ulb.ac.be>

>Not only would this require rewriting essentially every piece of R code
>ever written, but even worse, := is used in other languages (and in the
>prehistory of R) as an assignment operator so it would be even less clear
>than the current situation.

>For this transition, unlike disposing of '_', there would be no way to
>write code (including simple data analyses) that worked before and after
>the change.

>You can't get there from here (and I'm not convinced you want to).

>	-thomas

Right. But then, may be another (group of) characters could replace '=' for
named argument, eliminating the ambiguity with the assignment. What about
'::' foo(arg::value). In a first stage, '::' could become an alternative to
'=' for named arguments (and during this transition, the problem with
assigment still remains, of course). Then, in the next major release, '=' is
deprecated for named arguments. Finally, another major release later, when
all the code is (hopefully) rewritten with '::' for named arguments, '=' is
defunct for named argument, and '=' gets exactly the same meaning as '<-'
ANYWHERE, eliminating the problem discussed here. As far as I know, '::' is
not used yet in the S language. Some people would say it is replacing a
single character by two (obviously the most lazy ones that objected against
the disparition of '_' for assignation)! Not a major inconvenience, anyway.
Others would say that '::' has a different signification in some other
languages, but then, there is no solution because we have to deal with a
limited character set and a keyboard with only 88-103 keys!

In any case, this is major change, since, whatever the solution, it implies
incompatibles changes in code. I agree! One should note that, if a change
similar to this ('=' replaced by '::' for named arguments) was planned
*before* the introduction of '=' as a (quasi)synonym of '<-' for assignment,
it would have been easier to actualize code in the transitions phases (just
need to protect '==', '<=', '>=', '!=' and occurence of '=' in strings
before replacing any other occurence of '=' by '::'). Now, it would be much,
much more difficult. Compromizes, always compromizes,...



>On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, Philippe Grosjean wrote:

>> Deprecating '_' for assignment in the perspective of reusing it in
variables
>> names is nice (not just a personal impression bacause it is also common
in
>> other languages). I am fighting too often with unreadable codes like
>> var_value, even without spaces before and after '_'!!!
>> Addition of '=' for assignment is nice too (also commonly used in other
>> languages), except for this problem with named arguments...! I know this
is
>> a major change that would require patching all R code, but perhaps a
>> solution would be to replace '=' in named arguments with something
else,...
>> ('_'  for instance.. no, I am kidding!). But perhaps, ':=' would be a
nice
>> candidate. So:
>>
>> foo(a=b)  # Assignment of b to a, and a is passed as first argument to
>> function foo()
>> foo(a:=b) # b is passed to the named argument 'a' of function foo()
>>



-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._


behavior of =
Philippe Grosjean