ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with some aspects of functions likely to arise in extending R. It describes the functional programming to R, with emphasis on achieving and demonstrating functional behavior, a contribution to the reliability and safety of an extension to R. The chapter analyzes that aspect of R computations that differ from many other languages and may need to be understood to program effectively. It discusses replacement expressions that assign or modify objects in the local environment. R has a particularly flexible approach to such expressions. The chapter also discusses techniques to compute with language objects. Most languages allow only a fixed set of expressions on the left side of an assignment—what are traditionally called "lvalues". Computing on the language is a key to development and testing phases of computation. Tools exist to examine and describe the software, for the purpose of diagnosing programming problems.
