a < b < c is alway TRUE
Because it leads to absurdities like this whole thread has been discussing!
i think this is a misunderstanding: this thread is not from absurdistan but from userland.
What should they have done? They should have done what Fortran, Pascal, etc. do, and have a separate logical or boolean type that isn't automatically converted to a numerical type.
in my understanding R compares better to an comuter algebra system like mathematica than to a programming language like pascal or so. i don't know the mathematica-syntax for the natural "3 < 2 < 1", but i think it's a BAD idea to force *users* to write something weired like "ord(3 < 2) < 1". in an *application-oriented* statistical software-system natural syntax should be preferred to a "programmological"-syntax. thus it would be more user- friendly to re-write the parser/scanner parts of R in a way that "3 < 2 < 1" is naturally-correct evaluated to FALSE. on the other hand, r is open-source and i could do it myself... cu till -- "I have seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack-ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched seabeams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die." (Roy) -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._