On Sat, 26 Aug 2006, John Chambers wrote: > Well, two comments, in two non-compatible directions. > > 1. I have to say that I find the idea of using "+" to paste character > strings together aesthetically ugly.
Hear, hear! In a language where you can define new binary operators easily making the same operator do addition and concatenation really doesn't seem a good idea. It is done in some other languages, but so is using the same operator for printing and multiplying by powers of two. Lack of commutativity is obvious, but lack of associativity seems much more dangerous. Suppose x, y, and z are a mixture of strings and numbers. Hands up everyone who knows (without cheating) whether x+y+z would be interpreted the same way in R (with the current parser) as in Java or Delphi or Python (and are these all the same?). Which of "two + two = " + 2 + 2 2 + 2 + " = two + two" would be correct? -thomas Thomas Lumley Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Washington, Seattle ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel