advice/opinion on " < -" vs " =" in teaching R

John Kane <jrkrideau <at> yahoo.ca> writes:

I've only been using R for about 2.5 years but and I'm not all that good ?but

I vote for <- .

I think the deciding factor is in ?RSiteSearch() and the various manuals.

Almost everything I see uses <- . ?Why introduce = when it is not used

normally? ?It will just confuse the

students who are trying to use any of the documentation.

Not to mention they might slammed for bad syntax
on the R-help mailing list. ?:)

?Those are all good reasons.
?I have said something similar before
(see <http://www.mail-archive.com/r-help at r-project.org/msg16904.html>),
but I tend to use = because it seems to be more intuitive for
students, despite being logically confused at a deeper level,
and I want to spare them any additional cognitive load when they
are first getting introduced to R.
? I'm not particularly convinced by the "<- is more general
and there are some contexts where = doesn't work", because I'm
not trying to be absolutely rigorous, nor teach all the possible
ins and outs of R syntax. I would be very surprised if any of
the examples given actually came up in the course of a first-semester
statistics/modeling R course.

I just want to do what works best for
the students -- the problem is deciding on the balance between
short term benefit (<- is one more odd thing to get used to)
and long term benefit (they will see <- in other contexts, so
they might as well get used to it eventually).

?Ben Bolker