swirl 9: Functions

To understand computations in R, two slogans are helpful: 1. Everything that exists is an object. 2. Everything that happens is a function call.

 Sys.Date() The Sys.Date() function returns a string representing today's date.

%% You can use the modulus operator %% to find the remainder. Ex: 7 %% 4 evaluates to 3. 

paste() As you can see the first argument of paste() is `...` which is referred to as an ellipsis or simply dot-dot-dot. The ellipsis allows an indefinite number of arguments to be passed into a function. In the case of paste() any number of strings can be passed as arguments and paste() will return all of the strings combined into one string.

# ellipses_func(arg1, arg2 = TRUE, ...)
#
# In the above example arg1 has no default value, so a value must be provided
# for arg1. arg2 has a default value, and other arguments can come after arg2
# depending on how they're defined in the ellipses_func() documentation.
# Interestingly the usage for the paste function is as follows:
#
# paste (..., sep = " ", collapse = NULL)
#
# Notice that the ellipses is the first argument, and all other arguments after
# the ellipses have default values. This is a strict rule in R programming: all
# arguments after an ellipses must have default values. 

# The syntax for creating new binary operators in R is unlike anything else in
# R, but it allows you to define a new syntax for your function. I would only
# recommend making your own binary operator if you plan on using it often!
#
# User-defined binary operators have the following syntax:
#      %[whatever]% 
# where [whatever] represents any valid variable name.
# 
# Let's say I wanted to define a binary operator that multiplied two numbers and
# then added one to the product. An implementation of that operator is below:
#
# "%mult_add_one%" <- function(left, right){ # Notice the quotation marks!
#   left * right + 1
# }
#
# I could then use this binary operator like `4 %mult_add_one% 5` which would
# evaluate to 21.
#
# Write your own binary operator below from absolute scratch! Your binary
# operator must be called %p% so that the expression:
#
#       "Good" %p% "job!"
#
# will evaluate to: "Good job!"


"%p%" <- function(a,b){ # Remember to add arguments!
  
  paste(a,b)
  
}