On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 10:26 AM, Wacek Kusnierczyk <waclaw.marcin.kusnierc...@idi.ntnu.no> wrote: > ivo...@gmail.com wrote: >> Gentlemen---these are all very clever workarounds, > > hacks around the lack of a feature > >> but please forgive me for voicing my own opinion: IMHO, returning >> multiple values in a statistical language should really be part of the >> language itself. > > returning multiple values is supported by many programming languages, in > particular scripting languages. while in r you can use the %<-% hack or > have functions return lists of values, it could indeed be useful to > have such a feature in a statistical language like r. > > >> there should be a standard syntax of some sort, > > if you mean that r should have such a syntax, you're likely to learn > more about saying 'should' soon. > >> whatever it may be, that everyone should be able to use and which >> easily transfers from one local computer to another. It should not >> rely on clever hacks in the .Rprofile that are different from user to >> user, and which leave a reader of end user R code baffled at first by >> all the magic that is going on. Even the R tutorials for beginners >> should show a multiple-value return example right at the point where >> function calls and return values are first explained. > > as gabor says in another post, you probably should first show why having > multiple value returns would be useful in r. however, i don't think > there are good counterarguments anyway, and putting on you the burden of > proving a relatively obvious (or not so?) thing is a weak escape. > > to call for a reference, sec. 9.2.3, p. 450+ in [1] provides some > discussion and examples. >
The fact that other languages is an argument for further consideration but not a definitive argument for it. I have had this feature for years via my workaround yet I never use it which seems a good argument against it. ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
