On Fri, May 20, 2005 at 08:14:24AM -0400, Liaw, Andy wrote: > > From: Robin Hankin > > > > On May 20, 2005, at 11:00 am, Jan T. Kim wrote: > > > > > On Thu, May 19, 2005 at 03:10:53PM -0400, John Fox wrote: > > > > > >> Since you can use variables named c, q, or t in any event, I don't > > >> see why > > >> the existence of functions with these names is much of an > > impediment. > > > > > > True, particularly since I'm not too likely to use these > > variables for > > > (local) > > > functions, and variables of other types don't prevent > > functions from > > > working. > > > (I thought this was a problem... I must be spoilt by > > recently having > > > to read > > > too much Matlab code, where parentheses are used to both enclose > > > subscripts and > > > parameter lists, thus rendering subscript expressions and function > > > calls > > > syntactically indistinguishable.) > > > > > > Heh, I'm a recovering Matlab user too. This is sooooooooooo true! > > > > In Matlab: > > > > f(10) # function f() evaluated at 10 > > f(10) # 10th element of vector f. confusing!! > > > > R uses round brackets in two unrelated ways: > > > > 4*(1+2) --- using "(" and ")" to signify grouping > > f(8) function f() evaluated at 8. > > > > where there is no reason to use the same parenthesis symbol for both > > tasks. > > The same is done in Fortran/C/C++/Java/Python and God knows how many > others...
And this is different from the subscripting / function call ambiguity, as these languages (to the extent I know them) are designed such that parentheses for precedence control are syntactically distinguishable from those used for function parameter lists: If the opening parenthesis is preceded by an identifier, that identifier is a function name and the parenthesis opens a parameter list. (Python is a somewhat messy case, though, because it uses parentheses for tuples too.) Best regards, Jan -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | *NEW* email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | *NEW* WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----* ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html