Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.63a.0509301100330.29284@homer23.u.washington.edu>
Date: 2005-09-30T18:06:38Z
From: Thomas Lumley
Subject: Dots in function names
In-Reply-To: <433D7C3A.1030909@noaa.gov>
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Mike Prager wrote:
> Recent R function names seem to be using CaseOfTheLetters to mark words
> rather than dots as was done previously. Is the use of dots in function
> names deprecated, or is that simply a style choice? Will function names
> with dots cause problems in future revisions?
>
There are, and always have been, problems with using dots because of the
way S3 methods work. These are getting worse as more functions become
generic but are getting better as more methods are in namespaces and thus
registered.
I don't expect dots to go away any time soon, so the choice between
name.with.dots(), name_with_underscores(), runonname(), and
nameCamelCased() is really a stylistic one.
-thomas