[R] Why is there no macro facility for R?

[Marc Schwartz]

Hi,

I suppose that I might be considered a grey-hair, both literally and figuratively, at least for what little hair I have left…. ;-)

John might find this article by Thomas from R News in September of 2001 of interest. R News was the predecessor to the R Journal:

https://journal.r-project.org/articles/RN-2001-021/RN-2001-021.pdf

Bert is correct about the 20+ year time frame… :-)

Regards,

Marc Schwartz


> On May 22, 2025, at 10:32 PM, Bert Gunter <bgunter.4567 using gmail.com> wrote:
> John:
> 1. You might get a better response if you could give at least a couple of
> use case examples of what you mean.
> 
> 2. I have a hazy memory of this being actually discussed on this list ca ~
> 20 years ago. As I recall, some sort of macro facility may have been
> implemented in a package using R's compute-on-the-language features. But I
> may err -- and whatever was done (if anything) may be irrelevant to your
> query.
> 
> Cheers,
> Bert
> 
> "An educated person is one who can entertain new ideas, entertain others,
> and entertain herself."
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, May 22, 2025 at 7:14 PM Sorkin, John <jsorkin using som.umaryland.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>> Colleagues,
>> 
>> At the risk of being flamed, starting a war, being labeled a heretic . . .
>> etc., I would like to ask the grey-hairs among the R listserve members a
>> simple question. Why did the R core team not develop a macro language for
>> R. I understand that R was designed to be a function-based language, but
>> this does not rule out having macros as a facility that helps in code
>> development.
>> 
>> Thank you,
>> John
>> 
>> 
>> John David Sorkin M.D., Ph.D.
>> Professor of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine;
>> Associate Director for Biostatistics and Informatics, Baltimore VA Medical
>> Center Geriatrics Research, Education, and Clinical Center;
>> PI Biostatistics and Informatics Core, University of Maryland School of
>> Medicine Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center;
>> Senior Statistician University of Maryland Center for Vascular Research;
>> 
>> Division of Gerontology and Paliative Care,
>> 10 North Greene Street
>> GRECC (BT/18/GR)
>> Baltimore, MD 21201-1524
>> Cell phone 443-418-5382
>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 
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> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide https://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

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