Thanks for pointing this out. I overlooked it, presumably because it's in the last paragraph of "Details" and not illustrated in any example.
I still maintain there's a wart in what I'd described, which is `do.call` not accepting vectors as the second argument. Also, `collapse` is idiosyncratic: I have to remember a special knob for every function that has a vararg and non-vararg flavour.
You raise the point of taking the time to learn the language, and I acknowledge this. Yet, as an occassional user, this is precisely what I'd like to avoid. When working with R, I'm pragmatic: what I'm after is a working solution to the problem at hand, rather than its most succinct or elegant formulation. When I find one, I move on. In production code this would incur a technical debt, but due to R's exploratory nature, this is typically not much of a problem. Had the language been more consistent, it would take less time to learn it thoroughly.
I still maintain there's a wart in what I'd described, which is `do.call` not accepting vectors as the second argument. Also, `collapse` is idiosyncratic: I have to remember a special knob for every function that has a vararg and non-vararg flavour.
You raise the point of taking the time to learn the language, and I acknowledge this. Yet, as an occassional user, this is precisely what I'd like to avoid. When working with R, I'm pragmatic: what I'm after is a working solution to the problem at hand, rather than its most succinct or elegant formulation. When I find one, I move on. In production code this would incur a technical debt, but due to R's exploratory nature, this is typically not much of a problem. Had the language been more consistent, it would take less time to learn it thoroughly.