For reasons which I'll spare you, I'm writing a program to analyse R source code. This has led me to probe some of the darker corners of R syntax to find out what is supposed to happen.
Now, from reading the R documentation (and the New S book &c) I know perfectly well that f(a, b, etc) <- x is supposed to turn into a <- "f<-"(a, b, etc, value=x) Except, what if f is not an identifier or string? What, for example, should _this_ do? > x <- NULL > (if (TRUE) names else dim)(x) <- 27 I was expecting _either_ that I would be told that you can't set names(NULL) to 27, _or_ that I would be told the whole thing wasn't allowed. In fact, it was allowed. > x [1] 27 This result has me completely baffled. Is this behaviour intentional? What rules does it follow from? What _exactly_ are the rules for assignment supposed to be _in R_? The emphasis on _in R_ is because I know the New S book spells out a lot of detail, but (a) I've been searching for my copy for a couple of weeks and (b) R is not _exactly_ the same as S. ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help