[Rd] A patchwork indeed

[Avi Gross]

Let me be clear up front that I do not want to start any major discussions,
merely to share some observations.

 

We discussed at length what it would mean if R was extended to allow a plus
sign to concatenate text when the operands were both of the right types that
made sense for the purpose so that, as in a language like Python:

 

                "Hello " + "World!"

 

would result in the obvious concatenation and not as an error. It might be a
way to call perhaps a limited functionality of paste0() as an example. 

 

So, I was studying an R package called patchwork and looking at it from a
perspective in that it slightly extends the way ggplot uses the plus sign
when applied to objects of certain classes. Patchwork does allow something
like some form of (many types) of graphic objects to be displayed left to
right (or in a grid) by just typing 

p1 + p2 + p3

 

BUT it goes a bit nuts and overlays lots of operators so that:

 

                (p1 | p2) / p3

 

results in the first two taking up half each of a top row and the third in
the next row and wide. You can of course make all kinds of adjustments but
the point is that those symbols are in a sense overlaid from their default
meanings. there is also a meaning (a tad obscure) for a unary negative sign
as in

- p1 

 

And, without explanation here, the symbols * and & also are used in new
ways. 

 

I note the obvious that the normal precedence rules in R for these
symbols/operators are NOT changed so you often need to use extra levels of
parentheses to guarantee the order of evaluation.

 

Clearly anyone reading your code that has not thoroughly read the manual for
the package will be even more mystified than people are about ggplot and the
plus sign, or the pipe symbols used in the tidyverse and even the new one
now in base R. 

 

But my point is that it looks like doing it is quite possible and small
isolated worlds can benefit from the notational simplicity. Having said
that, this package also allows you to bypass all of this and use more
standard functions that generally get you the same results. Since
manipulating graphs and subgraphs generally does not require combining the
above symbols alongside their other normal usage, this may look harmless and
if you come from languages that routinely allow operators to be overloaded
or polymorphic, looks fine.

 

I am providing this info, not to make a case for doing anything but to ask
if it makes sense to document acceptable methods for others, perhaps using
their own created objects, to do such effects.

 

In case anyone is curious, start here for a sort of tutorial:

 

https://patchwork.data-imaginist.com/

 

Again, not advocating, just providing an example, no doubt among many
others, where R is used in an extended way that can be useful. But of course
moving R to be fully object-oriented in the same way as some other specific
language is not a valid goal.

 


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