>>>>> "LG" == Laurent Gatto <laurent.ga...@gmail.com> >>>>> on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 08:33:20 +0100 writes:
LG> For what concerns emacs users, the number of '#' has LG> different effects on the position of the comment. From LG> the ESS manual: 'By default, comments beginning with LG> ‘###’ are aligned to the beginning of the line. Comments LG> beginning with ‘##’ are aligned to the current level of LG> indentation for the block containing the LG> comment. Finally, comments beginning with ‘#’ are LG> aligned to a column on the right...'. I guess that ## is LG> the most wanted indentation for comments. Yes, that's all correct. (and Emacs+ESS being used quite a bit by some active R Core members, at least "historically") One thing to add: As most of you probably know, R was built using ideas and concepts from Lisp (aka "LISP"), and (Emacs-)Lisp being emacs' extension language, Emacs has always supported auto-indenting/filling of comments---which in lisp start with a ";" --- using different indentation rules for ";", ";;", ";;;" .... So it seems quite apt for R to continue this Lisp convention. Given the Lisp decent, this tradition is probably quite an old one in (academic) programming history. Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich (and R Core) LG> Best wishes, LG> Laurent LG> On 22 September 2010 07:26, Henrik Bengtsson LG> <h...@stat.berkeley.edu> wrote: >> Off topic, but since I've observe both styles, does >> anyone know the history behind/reason for using ## >> instead of a single # to start comments in R. I know >> some editors do this by default. Is it because in C it >> is easier to distinguish (search/replace/...) comments >> from C preprocessor directives such as #include, and >> that's became a de facto standard elsewhere? >> >> /Henrik >> >> PS. I don't want to get into a debate on what's the best >> style. >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >> ______________________________________________ LG> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list LG> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel