On Jan 12, 2012, at 12:04 PM, R. Michael Weylandt wrote:
Nope - you misunderstand entirely. Both of those functions have an
argument named "list" and the code you quote is just the standard
way of using a named argument. It could just as well read
rm(salmon = ls())
but that would be absurd. The list argument gets its name from the
fact it (usually) takes a list**, no more no less.
Actually that is not correct. The "list" argument takes a character
vector as input.
Giving it a list with either quoted or unquoted elements creates an
error:
> rm(list=list("x", "x1"))
Error in rm(list = list("x", "x1")) : invalid first argument
> rm(list=list(x, x1))
Error in rm(list = list(x, x1)) : invalid first argument
I entirely agree with the OP that it is unnecessarily confusing, but
is probably cast in stone because of history.
--
David.
Michael
**Not strictly true here as ls() doesn't return a list, but just go
with it. It's a vector of names, not a list in the data structure
sense.
On Jan 12, 2012, at 11:55 AM, Aditya Bhagwat
<bhagwatadi...@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all,
I have noticed that the expression 'list =' is sometimes used to
tell R to
evaluate something before executing it.
Two examples:
rm(list=ls())
a = 3
myVarName = 'a'
save(list=myVarName, file=...)
I was wondering whether there is any documentation on this way of
using
"list". Which is a clearly different use than what ?list talks
about, as
the latter addresses the use of 'list' as a datastructure.
Thanks for your help,
Adi
[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
______________________________________________
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.
______________________________________________
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.
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT
______________________________________________
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.
