From ggrothendieck at gmail.com  Sat Mar  7 17:06:15 2009
From: ggrothendieck at gmail.com (Gabor Grothendieck)
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 11:06:15 -0500
Subject: [Rd] question
In-Reply-To: <49B29233.7040205@idi.ntnu.no>
References: <000325575fc2f3201e046488263f@google.com>
	<49B29233.7040205@idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <971536df0903070806g38eee325q2e0cc5f2da8141b4@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 10:26 AM, Wacek Kusnierczyk
<Waclaw.Marcin.Kusnierczyk at idi.ntnu.no> wrote:
> ivowel at gmail.com wrote:
>> Gentlemen---these are all very clever workarounds,
>
> hacks around the lack of a feature
>
>> but please forgive me for voicing my own opinion: IMHO, returning
>> multiple values in a statistical language should really be part of the
>> language itself.
>
> returning multiple values is supported by many programming languages, in
> particular scripting languages. ?while in r you can use the %<-% hack or
> have functions return lists of values, it ?could indeed be useful to
> have such a feature in a statistical language like r.
>
>
>> there should be a standard syntax of some sort,
>
> if you mean that r should have such a syntax, you're likely to learn
> more about saying 'should' soon.
>
>> whatever it may be, that everyone should be able to use and which
>> easily transfers from one local computer to another. It should not
>> rely on clever hacks in the .Rprofile that are different from user to
>> user, and which leave a reader of end user R code baffled at first by
>> all the magic that is going on. Even the R tutorials for beginners
>> should show a multiple-value return example right at the point where
>> function calls and return values are first explained.
>
> as gabor says in another post, you probably should first show why having
> multiple value returns would be useful in r. ?however, i don't think
> there are good counterarguments anyway, and putting on you the burden of
> proving a relatively obvious (or not so?) thing is a weak escape.
>
> to call for a reference, sec. 9.2.3, p. 450+ in [1] provides some
> discussion and examples.
>

The fact that other languages is an argument for further consideration
but not a definitive argument for it.

I have had this feature for years via my workaround yet I never
use it which seems a good argument against it.



[Rd] question
Gabor Grothendieck