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On Reproducible Code

John Kane

Fri, Jul 27, 2012 9:48 AM

I'd vote for that!  
It would probably bug the blazes out of experienced users but the time savings in getting a newbie to actually supply enough information so that someone can, at least, try to answer the question would be well worth it.

John Kane
Kingston ON Canada

-----Original Message-----
From: gunter.berton at gene.com
Sent: Fri, 27 Jul 2012 07:49:28 -0700
To: jrkrideau at inbox.com
Subject: Re: [R] On Reproducible Code

I agree and would like to see it placed at the **TOP** of every post.

-- Bert

On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 7:11 AM, John Kane <jrkrideau at inbox.com> wrote:

-----Original Message-----
From: jim at bitwrit.com.au
Sent: Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:21:36 +1000
To: dcarlson at tamu.edu
Subject: Re: [R] On Reproducible Code

On 07/26/2012 01:50 AM, David L Carlson wrote:

We often refer requesters to the Posting Guide and chide them for not
reading it.
...
I hesitate to sound too optimistic, but there might be some advantage
in
making the statement more prominent and adding a reproducible example
using
dput().

The reponses to some requests for help do seem to get a volley of the
"reproducible code" answers. Some, such as:

I can't get the answer. PLEASE HELP!!!

probably deserve it, but others appear to emerge from the overheated
brain of the frustrated noob. With a wonderfully informative name like
"dput", it is rather challenging to guess that this function is the way
to calm the affronted guru with an example of your problem. I am
particularly amused by the phrase "reproducible code", which sounds
perilously close to the definition of a virus. Perhaps the neglected
little message at the bottom of each email (which seems to reproduce
itself) might be easier for the uninitiated to understand if it read:

Please include the R code that is causing the problem _and_ enough data
(see the "dput" function) for someone else to run the code and get the
same problem.

I can remember when I didn't know that there was a "dput" function.

Jim

I can remember spending a lot of time constructing a data set to post
before someone mentioned ?dput.  Ah, yes, I still have a couple of
generic ones archived.

I think your wording above makes a lot of sense.

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PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

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Thread (19 messages)

David L Carlson On Reproducible Code Jul 25 Gabor Grothendieck On Reproducible Code Jul 25 Bert Gunter On Reproducible Code Jul 25 Gabor Grothendieck On Reproducible Code Jul 25 Rui Barradas On Reproducible Code Jul 25 David Winsemius On Reproducible Code Jul 25 Jim Lemon On Reproducible Code Jul 27 John Kane On Reproducible Code Jul 27 Bert Gunter On Reproducible Code Jul 27 John Kane On Reproducible Code Jul 27 Hadley Wickham On Reproducible Code Jul 27 Rui Barradas On Reproducible Code Jul 27 Jeff Newmiller On Reproducible Code Jul 27 Hadley Wickham On Reproducible Code Jul 27 Bert Gunter On Reproducible Code Jul 27 Thomas Adams On Reproducible Code Jul 30 Peter Dalgaard On Reproducible Code Jul 30 Thomas Adams On Reproducible Code Jul 30 Bart Joosen On Reproducible Code Jul 31