[R] Pipe operator

[Milan Glacier]

With 50 years of programming experience, just think about how useful
pipe operator is in shell scripting. The output of previous call becomes
the input of next call... Genious idea from our beloved unix
conversion...


On 01/03/23 16:48, Sorkin, John wrote:
>I am trying to understand the reason for existence of the pipe operator, %>%, and when one should use it. It is my understanding that the operator sends the file to the left of the operator to the function immediately to the right of the operator:
>
>c(1:10) %>% mean results in a value of 5.5 which is exactly the same as the result one obtains using the mean function directly, viz. mean(c(1:10)). What is the reason for having two syntactically different but semantically identical ways to call a function? Is one more efficient than the other? Does one use less memory than the other?
>
>P.S. Please forgive what might seem to be a question with an obvious answer. I am a programmer dinosaur. I have been programming for more than 50 years. When I started programming in the 1960s the only pipe one spoke about was a bong.
>
>John