>>>>> "Ted" == Ted Harding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>>>> on Mon, 14 Jul 2003 13:50:35 +0100 (BST) writes:
Ted> On 14-Jul-03 Adelchi Azzalini wrote:
>>> Maybe it is reasonable to propose incorporating "drop"
>>> as one of the things you can set with "options"? :--
>>> [...]
>> Perhaps this is a way-out. As usual, everything is
>> feasible when we resort entirely on our own code. The
>> danger is that we might make use of some package (may be
>> written some years ago) which assumes drop=TRUE is the
>> default behaviour, and changing the default behaviour
>> might (potentially) have disasterous effects.
Ted> Indeed. However, it should be OK when embarking on a
Ted> block or function of matrix computations, written by
Ted> oneself, to enclose it between
Ted> options(drop=FALSE) ... options(drop=TRUE)
Ted> (unless some of the standard or "base" matrix functions
Ted> which one might use in "..." depend on the default. How
Ted> could one tell?).
First:
Yes, most if not all good S programmers I know agree that
drop = FALSE should have been the default --- when S was created.
So you are right, here, Adelchi.
But I'm pretty confident that we, the R core team, pretty
unanimously believe that options() that influence the result of
computations are `X' , where X is in
{"bad", "evil", "design flaw", "deserves death penalty"} (;-)
Currently, the only official exception is the contrasts setting;
all other options don't influence computations, but ``output''
(printed and graphical) and interface to R-external tools
including `input' such as character encoding and `ts.eps' for
time-series rounding behavior.
Martin Maechler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://stat.ethz.ch/~maechler/
Seminar fuer Statistik, ETH-Zentrum LEO C16 Leonhardstr. 27
ETH (Federal Inst. Technology) 8092 Zurich SWITZERLAND
phone: x-41-1-632-3408 fax: ...-1228 <><
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