[Rd] R history: Why 'L; in suffix character ‘L’ for integer constants?

[peter dalgaard]

Wikipedia claims that C ints are still only guaranteed to be at least 16 bits, and longs are at least 32 bits. So no, R's integers are long.

-pd

> On 16 Jun 2017, at 20:20 , William Dunlap via R-devel <r-devel at r-project.org> wrote:
> 
> But R "integers" are C "ints", as opposed to S "integers", which are C
> "long ints".  (I suppose R never had to run on ancient hardware with 16 bit
> ints.)
> 
> Bill Dunlap
> TIBCO Software
> wdunlap tibco.com
> 
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 10:47 AM, Yihui Xie <xie at yihui.name> wrote:
> 
>> Yeah, that was what I heard from our instructor when I was a graduate
>> student: L stands for Long (integer).
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Yihui
>> --
>> https://yihui.name
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 11:00 AM, Serguei Sokol <sokol at insa-toulouse.fr>
>> wrote:
>>> Le 16/06/2017 à 17:54, Henrik Bengtsson a écrit :
>>>> 
>>>> I'm just curious (no complaints), what was the reason for choosing the
>>>> letter 'L' as a suffix for integer constants?  Does it stand for
>>>> something (literal?), is it because it visually stands out, ..., or no
>>>> specific reason at all?
>>> 
>>> My guess is that it is inherited form C "long integer" type (contrary to
>>> "short integer" or simply "integer")
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_data_types
>> 
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-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
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