[Rd] Error in documentation of "merge"

[Kasper Daniel Hansen]

On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 8:20 AM, peter dalgaard <pdalgd at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Nov 4, 2011, at 13:11 , Rainer M Krug wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> there seems to be an error in the documentation of the "merge" function:
>>
>> Arguments:
>>
>>    x, y: data frames, or objects to be coerced to one.
>>
>>  by, by.x, by.y: specifications of the common columns.  See ŒDetails‚.
>>
>>     all: logical; Œall = L‚ is shorthand for Œall.x = L‚ and Œall.y =
>>          L‚.
>>
>>
>> The "L" should be a T or a TRUE.
>
>
> I think it's on purpose: L indicates a logical value, TRUE _or_ FALSE.

I agree with Peter here.  But it did make me pause the first time I
read it on the help page years ago and furthermore, I think this is at
least the second time where this particular formulation has been
questioned on R-devel.  I am not an index of R help pages, but I
cannot recall seeing the 'L' as shorthand for logical.  I suggest
changing the formulation since it seems that several people have been
confused, for example by writing out 'logical' instead of 'L'.

Kasper