Google's coding standards for R

For any software application in production and produced by a development team, coding standards are an essential tool for promoting maintainability and quality. Google has recently published their coding standards for R, with a compendium of common-sense tips for keeping an R project in shape. The standards Google R programmers adhere to include:

• File Names: end in .R 
• Identifiers: variable.name, FunctionName, kConstantName  
• Line Length: maximum 80 characters  
• Indentation: two spaces, no tabs  
• Curly Braces: first on same line, last on own line  
• Assignment: use <-, not =  
• Semicolons: don't use them  
• Commenting Guidelines: all comments begin with # followed by a space; inline comments need two spaces before the #

Follow the link below to see the other standards and all of the details. (Thanks to Daniel Levine of TechCrunch for the tip.)

Google Code: Google's R Style Guide

Comments

[Rich Calaway]

Interesting to compare these to the "R Coding Standards" in the R Core Team's R Internals manual. In particular, R Core writes "a basic indentation of 2 ... has been determined not to display the structure clearly enough when using narrow fonts"

[Tim]

so don't use narrow fonts!