[R] round() and negative digits

Michael Friendly friendly at yorku.ca
Mon Oct 10 21:17:43 CEST 2011


On 10/9/2011 6:18 AM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>
> Sometimes it is better not to document things than try to give precise
> details which may get changed *and* there will be useRs who misread (and
> maybe even file bug reports on their misreadings). The source is the
> ultimate documentation.

I can't agree with this less.  The source does the computation. The 
documentation says how to use it and what it should do.  Corner cases
can be trapped in code or mentioned in Notes.  But the source is
only useful if you can easily find it and then can understand what it is
doing, particularly for a .Primitive like round().
The source is only the documentation of last resort.

-Michael



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