On 26/10/2007, at 11:44 AM, Tim Calkins wrote: > Hi everyone - > > This came up within the last day -- Jim's response to Deepankar is > pasted below.
(but snipped out of this response). > There are probably lots of reasons, but what is the advantage to using > .temp over, say, temp? > > I often find myself writing temporary objects -- should I use the . > preface? What would be the advantages to doing so? > > Thanks in advance for what will surely be a collection of illuminating > responses. The difference is that you see ``temp'' when you do an ls() of your workspace, and you don't see ``.temp'' --- it's hidden. Unless you ask particularly nicely! The advantage of using .temp is that you can't see it (so it doesn't clutter things up). The ***dis**advantage of using .temp is that you can't see it! :-) I guess the rationale for using .temp is the presumption that if you can't see it you don't really want it. I.e. overwriting something called .temp is unlikely to lose you an object that you desperately wanted to keep. If you were passionately fond of the contents of .temp, you would've named the object in such a way that you could look at it from time to time without having to make a special effort (having to set all.names=TRUE). OTOH something called temp is unlikely to be something of which you are passionately fond anyhow. cheers, Rolf Turner ###################################################################### Attention:\ This e-mail message is privileged and confid...{{dropped:9}} ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.