Bounty on Error Checking
Well...
On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 10:00 AM, ivo welch <ivo.welch at anderson.ucla.edu> wrote:
Dear R developers---I just spent half a day debugging an R program, which had two bugs---I selected the wrongly named variable, which turns out to have been a scalar, which then happily multiplied as if it was a matrix; and another wrongly named variable from a data frame, that triggered no error when used as a[["name"]] or a$name . there should be an option to turn on that throws an error inside R when one does this. I cannot imagine that there is much code that wants to reference non-existing columns in data frames.
But I can -- and do it all the time: To add a new variable, "d" to a data frame, df, containing only "a" and "b" (with 10 rows, say): df[["d"]] <- 1:10 Trying to outguess documentation to create error triggers is a very bad idea. R already has plenty of debugging tools -- and there is even a "debug" package. Perhaps you need a better programming editor/IDE. There are several listed on CRAN, RStudio, etc. -- Bert
I know you guys are saints for developing without financial support. but maybe we non-insider end-users can help by putting up a bounty list on R-project for us end-users to contribute to? I would pledge $500 to a $10,000 fund that funds a project to comprehensively enhance the programming and debugging aspects of R. it would only take 20 of us to make this possible. personally, I think basic nudgeware is the way to go. when a user starts R in interactive mode, there should be a note that says, please donate $20 to the R foundation to support the development. press enter to continue or enter your contribution number to avoid this message in the future . you can even accept the same string if need be. it's a nudge only, not a requirement. regards, /iaw ---- Ivo Welch (ivo.welch at gmail.com) http://www.ivo-welch.info/ J. Fred Weston Professor of Finance Anderson School at UCLA, C519 Director, UCLA Anderson Fink Center for Finance and Investments Free Finance Textbook, http://book.ivo-welch.info/ Editor, Critical Finance Review, http://www.critical-finance-review.org/
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-- Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics Internal Contact Info: Phone: 467-7374 Website: http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm