On 15-Jan-10 04:06:55, Rolf Turner wrote: > On 15/01/2010, at 4:45 PM, Erin Hodgess wrote: >> Hi R People: >> >> I'm teaching a statistical computing class using R starting >> next week (yay!) and I have an opinion type question, please. >> >> I'm old school and use "<-" in an assignment. >> >> However, I'm starting to see the "=" in the literature. >> >> Which should I use or does it matter, please? > > It's basically a matter of taste. But people with ***good*** > taste use "<-". :-) > > Constructions such as "a = a+3" are toadally illogical whereas > "a <- a + 3" > makes perfect sense. > > However I'm sore afraid that as is always the case, good taste > fails and bad taste prevails. I.e. "=" for assignment will > take over.
Yes, water flows down-hill -- unless we build control structures ... > Personally I shall resist as long as possible, i.e. until "<-" > is removed from the syntax structure by R Core. > > cheers, > Rolf There is at least one context where the distinction must be preserved. Example: pnorm(1.5) # [1] 0.9331928 pnorm(x=1.5) # Error in pnorm(x = 1.5) : unused argument(s) (x = 1.5) pnorm(x<-1.5) # [1] 0.9331928 x # [1] 1.5 Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 15-Jan-10 Time: 06:57:16 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.