Assignment token of R

when I recalled the switch function, it always gave the first element, no matter what the parameter is.

when organism changed to “yeast”, and called switch function, species supposed to be changed to “Sc”, but it remains it’s original value.

After I read the manual, I change “<-” to “=”, and it works as I expected.

In R, the assignment token is “<-” but not “=”. “=” is equivalent to “<-” when assign a value. At this time, it’s not to assign a value but to name an alternative.

It’s curious but this is the syntax of R.

The authors of R once said: syntax is superficial.

I know syntax is not the essential of a language, but it’s the way how we express our ideas. At this point, it’s the most important thing. This maybe the reason why they chose S as the syntax of R, since S is designed for statistical computing.

I really hate the syntax sometimes.

Here is the explanation from ‘The R Inferno’ page 78