:"<R>" for symbol("<R>") makes sense to me, so if it's not in the way of
anything else, I'm all for it.
And yeah, :"<R>" == "<R>" returns true, so I don't see how this could
really make something impossible to do, which is possible today. I guess if
there's code out that quotes literal strings like that it'll break, but I
doubt that there's a lot of it... I have no idea how such a change would be
implemented, though, so I'm afraid I won't be of much help making it happen.
// T
On Friday, May 2, 2014 9:50:14 AM UTC+2, Stefan Karpinski wrote:
>
> We talked at some point about making :"<R>" syntax for symbol("<R>") and
> requiring something like :("<R>") to express the fairly useless operation
> of quoting the string "<R>" (this is useless because the result is just the
> string "<R>"). Barring some problem with this that I'm not thinking of, I'd
> be in favor of such a change.
>
>
> On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 3:14 AM, Tomas Lycken <[email protected]<javascript:>
> > wrote:
>
>> Sorry to hijack the thread, but since I stumbled over this problem myself
>> (in the same context) and didn't know about the `symbol("A")` syntax, this
>> seems like an appropriate place to ask:
>>
>> In the dataframe I was working with, I had one column named "R", and
>> another which I wanted to name "<R>". Using :R was no problem, but it's not
>> possible to refer to :<R> at all. (Try it in the REPL - it parses it as an
>> incomplete expression, and if I add something after I get an error "R not
>> defined"...)
>>
>> I think it's cool that it's possible to define symbols from arbitrary
>> strings using e.g. `symbol("<R>")`, but it's kind of clunky that you can't
>> refer to them with the colon syntax once they're defined. Is there a way
>> around this, or do I have to simply "deal with it"? =)
>>
>> // T
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, May 1, 2014 7:24:05 AM UTC+2, Ivar Nesje wrote:
>>>
>>> Symbols in Julia is a special form of strings that are faster for some
>>> operations (like comparisons) and much slower for others. Julia uses
>>> symbols internally to represent variable names.
>>>
>>> You create a symbol from a string with the symbol("A") function, or the
>>> :A syntax.
>>>
>>
>
