R is GNU S, not C.... [was "how to get or store ....."]

"P" == P Ehlers <ehlers at math.ucalgary.ca>
    on Tue, 06 Dec 2005 08:35:07 -0700 writes:

    P> vincent at 7d4.com wrote:

    >> Martin Maechler a ??crit :
    >> 
    >> 

    >>> please, please,  these trailing ";"  are  *so* ugly.
    >>> This is GNU S, not C (or matlab) !
    >>> 
    >>> but I'll be happy already if you could
    >>> drop these ugly empty statements at the end of your lines...

    >> 
    >> 
    >> May I disagree ?
    >> I find missing ";" at end of lines *so* ugly.
    >> Ugly/not ugly depends on our observer's eyes.
    >> From my programmer point of view, I prefer to mark
    >> clearly the end of the lines.
    >> In many languages, it's safer to do it this way,
    >> and I thank the R developers to permit it.
    >> (in my opinion, it should even be mandatory).
    >> (By the way, marking the end of lines with a unique symbol
    >> makes also the job easier for the following treatment.)
    >> And yes, I'm also a C programmer ;-)
    >> 

    >> > {and I have another chain of argments why   "<-" is so more
    >> > expressive than "="

    >> 
    >> Why "<-" seems better than "=" is also quite mysterious for me.
    >> There was a discussion about this point recently I think.
    >> I believe in 99% of cases it's more for historical reason
    >> (and perhaps also for some "snob" reasons).
    >> 
    >> I am not at all a 20 years experienced R programmer, but I have
    >> written several hundreds of R lines those 6 last months,
    >> and until today didn't get any problem using "=" 

instead of "<-".

    >> 
    >> But I'll read your chain of arguments with interest.

    P> Well, I'll have to disagree a bit. While I don't care so much
    P> about trailing ";" (as long as it does not become mandatory),
    P> I don't like the use of "=" for assignment and that's 
definitely
    P> NOT for "snob" reasons, whatever those are. I just 
think code is
    P> *much* easier to read if assignment is distinguished from
    P> argument settings.

Thank you, Peter.  Indeed, this is exactly the main of my arguments:
Since "=" is used quite often in S for argument setting in
function calls, *additionally* using "<-" for assignment is
more expressive. 
Also, e.g., a2ps (a nice 'ASCII' to PostScript converter), comes
{at least on Debian Linux} preconfigured for R, and uses nice
typesetting for "<-"; similarly for ESS.
OTOH, it's pretty hard to correctly markup and differentiate
those "=" which are assignments from those which are function.
argument settings.

    P> Peter Ehlers

[But really, I'm more concerned and quite bit disappointed by
 the diehard ";" lovers]

Martin Maechler