On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 11:26:55AM -0400, Duncan Murdoch wrote: > On 5/10/2006 11:10 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: > > On 5/10/06, Duncan Murdoch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> What is it that you find objectionable about having a default for the > >> file argument in read.table? I think Martin has said that he doesn't > >> want non-UI functions to be involved with UI functions, but I don't see > >> that: if your code works now, it will be completely unaffected by > >> setting a default for the argument. (Sorry if I summarized the argument > >> incorrectly, Martin, I didn't look it up.) > > > > That would be my objection too. UI should not be tied to the non-UI core. > > Its basically a loose coupling argument. > > I don't accept that argument, because in R everything* is interactive. > There isn't a non-UI core. The function arguments are part of the user > interface. It seems to me that there might be a misunderstanding here; as the term "user" is used to refer to a person interacting with the computer on the one hand, and to refer to a programmer using R on the other hand. Everything being "part of the user interface", in the sense of every user-visible function being part of the API, does not and should not imply that everything should be interactive. In my experience, interactivity is a rather double-edged thing: On the one hand, it facilitates learning and exploration, but on the other hand, its improper use is frequently detrimental to reproducibility of scientific computation. Best regards, Jan -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----* ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
