[Rd] Underscores in package names

Abby Spurdle @purd|e@@ @end|ng |rom gm@||@com
Fri Aug 16 01:20:42 CEST 2019


> While
> package names are not functions, using dots in package names
> encourages the use of dots in functions, a dangerous practice.

"dangerous"...?
I can't understand the necessity of RStudio and Tiny-Verse affiliated
persons to repeatedly use subjective and unscientific phrasing.

Elegant, Advanced, Dangerous...
At UseR, there was even "Advanced Use of your Favorite IDE".

This is not science.
This is marketing.

There's nothing dangerous about it other than your belief that it's
dangerous.
I note that many functions in the stats package use dots in function names.
Your statement implies that the stats package is badly designed, which it
is not.
Out of 14,800-ish packages on CRAN, very few of them are even close to the
standard set by the stats package, in my opinion.

And as noted by other people in this thread, changing naming policies could
interfere with a lot of software "out there", which is dangerous.

> Dots in
> names is also one of the common stones cast at R as a language, as
> dots are used for object oriented method dispatch in other common
> languages.

I don't think the goal is to copy other OOP systems.
Furthermore, some shells use dot as the current working directory and Java
uses dots in package namespaces.
And then there's regular expressions...

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