Message-ID: <Pine.A41.4.61b.0502131359490.164234@homer04.u.washington.edu>
Date: 2005-02-13T23:07:53Z
From: Thomas Lumley
Subject: ?if
In-Reply-To: <1c23c26aac98b4cda9d52c292167a600@uleth.ca>
On Sat, 12 Feb 2005, Dr. John R. Vokey wrote:
> I am trying to introduce a class of senior undergraduates to the values and
> advantages of R for their statistical needs. Unfortunately, little (and
> inconsequential) inconsistencies such as these do little to improve their
> confidence in the application.
You could tell them that the argument to ? (and to apropos) should
*always* be quoted, which is internally consistent and is consistent with
other functions, where strings do have to be quoted. Unfortunately the
documentation has examples with bare names, but most people don't read the
documentation.
The fact that help() accepts bare names is a bit of a wart -- for example,
text<-"lm"
help(text)
which is annoying when programming.
-thomas