[R] extra .

[William Dunlap]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of kfcnhl
> Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:34 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] extra .
> 
> 
> sigma0 <- sqrt((6. * var(maxima))/pi)
> 
> What does the '.' do here?

In R it does nothing: both '6' and '6.' parse as "numerics"
(in C, double precision numbers).  In SV4 and S+ '6' parses
as an integer (in C, a long) and '6.' parses as a numeric,
so putting the decimal point after numerics makes the
code a bit more portable, although there are not too many
cases where the difference is significant.   Calls to .C, etc.,
and oveflowing arithmetic are the main problem points.

In R and S+ '6L' represents an integer.

S+'s parse has a parse.mode="R" argument that parses
text more like R does: '6' is a numeric, '_' is not the assignment
operator, && has higher precedence than ||, etc.


 
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