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The first time I tried to read R code I was immediately disgusted with how '.' is a valid variable name character. Not only valid, but inexplicably also in com
by charles-salvia 10y ago
The first time I tried to read R code I was immediately disgusted with how '.' is a valid variable name character. Not only valid, but inexplicably also in common use.
- gone35 10y agoThat's in part because, unaccountably, '_' denotes assignment in S.
- yuubi 10y ago> unaccountably Maybe because in ASCII-63 the _ codepoint meant left-arrow (which was preserved in at least smalltalk systems much past the 60s)?
- shanusmagnus 10y agoMy theory is that they might have been trying to protest against the non-mathematical theft of = (equality) to mean assignment, as = is used in most other languages. (Not that that's an excuse for violating the shit out of the Principle of Least Surprise in a trillion different ways.)