[Rd] assign, documentation (PR#1434)

[ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk]

I do think that the issues are clearer if the help pages are separated,
and I have separated them.  The crux seems to me to have been that too
many diverse concepts were on one help page.

I also noticed `-' is undocumented ... and left it so.


On 4 Apr 2002, Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote:

> ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk writes:
>
> > On Thu, 4 Apr 2002 Martin.Schlather@uni-bayreuth.de wrote:
> >
> > > The help for `assign' says
> > >
> > >  In all the assignment operator expressions, `x' can be a name or
> > >  an expression defining a part of an object to be replaced (e.g.,
> > >  `z[[1]]').  The name does not need to be quoted, though it can be.
> > >
> > > So I would expect that by
> > >  a<-1:4
> > >  assign("a[1]",2)
> > > the first component of a gets the value 2, but the object "a[1]" is
> > > created.
> > > Could this be clarified in the documentation?
> >
> > Could you suggest how?  You quoted an *expression*, and the page refers to
> > quoting a *name*, so I don't know that I see the crux here.
>
> Actually, it *is* a name that is getting quoted, it just has these weird
> bracket characters in it, so it is not "syntactically valid".
>
> One improvement might be: "the name can be any string of text and may
> be quoted, but this is only necessary if it is not a syntactically
> valid name."
>
> We might also emphasize that "assignment operator expressions" does
> not include assign(), only <-, <<-, and =. (And _ until we finally get
> it killed...). On the other hand it is arguably clear enough already,
> if read carefully. (For this reason alone, the posters remark is off
> base, but he might have asked about "a[1]" <- 2.)
>
> In assign(), `x' must be a character object. As in
>
> > a <- "b"
> > assign(a,2)
> > a
> [1] "b"
> > b
> [1] 2
>
>
> --
>    O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3
>   c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N
>  (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
> ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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