The State of Naming Conventions in R Rasmus Bth - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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The State of Naming Conventions in R Rasmus Bth - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Mar 15, 2023 369 likes •1.14k views

The State of Naming Conventions in R Rasmus Bth rasmus.baath@lucs.lu.se Lund University Cognitive Science The only real difficulties in programming are cache invalidation and naming things. -- Phil Karlton Outline In the R ecosystem

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SLIDE 1

The State of Naming Conventions in R

Rasmus Bååth rasmus.baath@lucs.lu.se Lund University Cognitive Science

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SLIDE 2

The only real difficulties in programming are cache invalidation and naming things.

  • - Phil Karlton
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SLIDE 3

Outline

  • In the R ecosystem many different

naming conventions are used.

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SLIDE 4

Outline

  • In the R ecosystem many different

naming conventions are used.

  • This is not a good thing.
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SLIDE 5

Outline

  • In the R ecosystem many different

naming conventions are used.

  • This is not a good thing.
  • How to deal with the current naming

convention situation.

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SLIDE 6
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Different Naming Conventions used in R

  • alllowercase

○ searchpaths, srcfilecopy

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SLIDE 8

Different Naming Conventions used in R

  • alllowercase

○ searchpaths, srcfilecopy

  • period.separated

○ as.numeric, read.table

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SLIDE 9

Different Naming Conventions used in R

  • alllowercase

○ searchpaths, srcfilecopy

  • period.separated

○ as.numeric, read.table

  • underscore_separated

○ seq_along, package_version

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SLIDE 10

Different Naming Conventions used in R

  • alllowercase

○ searchpaths, srcfilecopy

  • period.separated

○ as.numeric, read.table

  • underscore_separated

○ seq_along, package_version

  • lowerCamelCase

○ colMeans, supressPackageStartupMessage

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SLIDE 11

Different Naming Conventions used in R

  • alllowercase

○ searchpaths, srcfilecopy

  • period.separated

○ as.numeric, read.table

  • underscore_separated

○ seq_along, package_version

  • lowerCamelCase

○ colMeans, supressPackageStartupMessage

  • UpperCamelCase

○ Vectorize, NextMethod

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Different Naming Conventions used in R

  • alllowercase

○ searchpaths, srcfilecopy

  • period.separated

○ as.numeric, read.table

  • underscore_separated

○ seq_along, package_version

  • lowerCamelCase

○ colMeans, supressPackageStartupMessage

  • UpperCamelCase

○ Vectorize, NextMethod

  • .OTHER_style

○ Cstack_info, Sys.setlocale, Sys.setFileTime

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SLIDE 13

Guess the naming convention for parameters of read.table!

period.separated lowerCamelCase strip white

? ?

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SLIDE 14

Guess the naming convention for parameters of read.table!

period.separated lowerCamelCase strip.white

✔ ✘

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SLIDE 15

Guess the naming convention for parameters of read.table!

period.separated lowerCamelCase strip.white

✔

blank lines skip

? ✘ ?

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SLIDE 16

Guess the naming convention for parameters of read.table!

period.separated lowerCamelCase strip.white

✔

blank.lines.skip

✔ ✘ ✘

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SLIDE 17

Guess the naming convention for parameters of read.table!

period.separated lowerCamelCase strip.white

✔

blank.lines.skip

✔

allow escapes

? ✘ ✘ ?

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SLIDE 18

Guess the naming convention for parameters of read.table!

period.separated lowerCamelCase strip.white

✔

blank.lines.skip

✔

allowEscapes

✔ ✘ ✘ ✘

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SLIDE 19

Guess the naming convention for parameters of read.table!

period.separated lowerCamelCase strip.white

✔

blank.lines.skip

✔

allowEscapes

✔

col names

? ✘ ✘ ✘ ?

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Guess the naming convention for parameters of read.table!

period.separated lowerCamelCase strip.white

✔

blank.lines.skip

✔

allowEscapes

✔

col.names

✔ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘

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SLIDE 21

Guess the naming convention for parameters of read.table!

period.separated lowerCamelCase strip.white

✔

blank.lines.skip

✔

allowEscapes

✔

col.names

✔

col classes

? ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ?

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SLIDE 22

Guess the naming convention for parameters of read.table!

period.separated lowerCamelCase strip.white

✔

blank.lines.skip

✔

allowEscapes

✔

col.names

✔

colClasses

✔ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘

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SLIDE 23

Guess the naming convention for parameters of read.table!

period.separated lowerCamelCase strip.white

✔

blank.lines.skip

✔

allowEscapes

✔

col.names

✔

colClasses

✔

strings as factors

? ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ?

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SLIDE 24

Guess the naming convention for parameters of read.table!

period.separated lowerCamelCase strip.white

✔

blank.lines.skip

✔

allowEscapes

✔

col.names

✔

colClasses

✔

stringsAsFactors

✔ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘

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SLIDE 25

Unofficial naming conventions guidelines.

  • Bioconductor’s coding standards.

○ readTable, stringsAsFactors.

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Unofficial naming conventions guidelines.

  • Bioconductor’s coding standards.

○ readTable, stringsAsFactors.

  • Hadley Wickham’s style guide

○ read_table, strings_as_factors.

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Unofficial naming conventions guidelines.

  • Bioconductor’s coding standards.

○ readTable, stringsAsFactors.

  • Hadley Wickham’s style guide

○ read_table, strings_as_factors.

  • Colin Gillespie’s R style guide

○ ReadTable, strings_as_factors

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SLIDE 28

Unofficial naming conventions guidelines.

  • Bioconductor’s coding standards.

○ readTable, stringsAsFactors.

  • Hadley Wickham’s style guide

○ read_table, strings_as_factors.

  • Colin Gillespie’s R style guide

○ ReadTable, strings_as_factors

  • Google’s R style guide

○ ReadTable, strings.as.factors

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What naming conventions are used in practice?

  • Comprehensive R Archive Network to the

rescue!

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What naming conventions are used in practice?

  • Comprehensive R Archive Network to the

rescue!

  • I downloaded all (4411) packages on

CRAN.

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What naming conventions are used in practice?

  • Comprehensive R Archive Network to the

rescue!

  • I downloaded all (4411) packages on

CRAN.

  • Got 339032 parameter names and 76176

function names.

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SLIDE 32

What naming conventions are used in practice?

  • Comprehensive R Archive Network to the

rescue!

  • I downloaded all (4411) packages on

CRAN.

  • Got 339032 parameter names and 76176

function names.

  • Removed the class part of S3 functions,

(plot.mcmc -> plot).

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SLIDE 33

What naming conventions are used in practice?

  • Comprehensive R Archive Network to the

rescue!

  • I downloaded all (4411) packages on

CRAN.

  • Got 339032 parameter names and 76176

function names.

  • Removed the class part of S3 functions,

(plot.mcmc -> plot).

  • Counted how many of the functions and

parameters matched the different naming conventions.

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SLIDE 34
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SLIDE 39

Why heterogenous naming conventions are a bad thing.

  • It is not aesthetically pleasing.
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SLIDE 40

Why heterogenous naming conventions are a bad thing.

  • It is not aesthetically pleasing.
  • It makes R harder to learn.
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A Memory Experiment

Mixed capitalization condition (n = 71) flood Critic victory basis deficit testing General alcohol Track profile Train equity All lower case condition (n=77) profile critic train general flood track alcohol victory equity testing basis deficit

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Participants remembered on average 1.2 ± 0.6 more words in the All lower case condition. (95% bootstrap CI)

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Why heterogenous naming conventions are a bad thing.

  • It is not aesthetically pleasing.
  • It makes R harder to learn
  • It makes R harder to use.
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Heterogenous naming conventions makes R harder to use.

  • It is practically impossible to follow
  • ne naming convention even if you try.
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SLIDE 45

Heterogenous naming conventions makes R harder to use.

  • It is practically impossible to follow
  • ne naming convention even if you try.
  • Easier to make errors.
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SLIDE 46

Heterogenous naming conventions makes R harder to use.

  • It is practically impossible to follow
  • ne naming convention even if you try.
  • Easier to make errors.
  • It is harder to guess names of

functions and parameters.

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SLIDE 47

as.date("2013-07-11")

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as.date("2013-07-11") asDate("2013-07-11")

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as.date("2013-07-11") asDate("2013-07-11") as_date("2013-07-11")

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as.date("2013-07-11") asDate("2013-07-11") as_date("2013-07-11") as.Date("2013-07-11")✔

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Heterogenous naming conventions makes R harder to use.

  • It is practically impossible to follow
  • ne naming convention even if you try.
  • Easier to make errors.
  • It is harder to guess names of

functions and parameters.

  • It invites functions with names that

just differ by convention. anova vs Anova ncol vs NCOL summary vs Summary

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So, what to do?

  • Use autocompletion.
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Autocompletion is great!

  • Relieves the cognitive burden of having

to remember identifier names exactly.

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Autocompletion is great!

  • Relieves the cognitive burden of having

to remember identifier names exactly.

  • Works great in many editors, for

example Rstudio.

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Autocompletion is great!

  • Relieves the cognitive burden of having

to remember identifier names exactly.

  • Works great in many editors, for

example Rstudio.

  • Does not work if you don't know the

case of the first letter.

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Autocompletion is great!

  • Relieves the cognitive burden of having

to remember identifier names exactly.

  • Works great in many editors, for

example Rstudio.

  • Does not work if you don't know the

case of the first letter.

  • Does not work if you use the wrong

naming convention.

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So, what to do?

  • Use autocompletion.
  • At least follow some naming convention.
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So, what to do?

  • Use autocompletion.
  • At least follow some naming convention.
  • But don't follow Google's!
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So, what to do?

  • Use autocompletion.
  • At least follow some naming convention.
  • But don't follow Google's!
  • Be consistent.
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So, what to do?

  • Use autocompletion.
  • At least follow some naming convention.
  • But don't follow Google's!
  • Be consistent.

Like hadley_wickham.

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Conclusions

  • Naming conventions are important.
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Conclusions

  • Naming conventions are important.
  • You're not totally off if you use

lowerCamelCase for function names.

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Conclusions

  • Naming conventions are important.
  • You're not totally off if you use

lowerCamelCase for function names.

  • You're totally off if you use

UpperCamelCase.

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Conclusions

  • Naming conventions are important.
  • You're not totally off if you use

lowerCamelCase for function names.

  • You're totally off if you use

UpperCamelCase.

  • CRAN is great for statistics about R

usage.

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From the UseR 2013 Website: " Following eight successful useR! meetings, the conference is focused on:

  • 1. R as the `lingua franca' of data

analysis and statistical computing, ..."

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Thanks for listening!

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