The Shape of Code

One thing I have noticed when reading other peoples’ R code is that their functions are often a lot longer than mine. Writing overly long functions is a common novice programmer mistake, but the code I am reading does not look like it is written by novices (based on the wide variety of base functions they are using, something a novice is unlikely to do, and by extrapolating my knowledge of novice behavior in other languages to R). I have a possible explanation for these longer functions, R users’ cultural belief that use of global variables is taboo.

Where did this belief originate? I think it can be traced back to the designers of R being paid up members of the functional programming movement of the early 80’s. This movement sought to mathematically prove programs correct but had to deal with the limitation that existing mathematical techniques were not really up to handling programs that contained states (e.g., variables that were assigned different values at different points in their execution). The solution was to invent a class of programming languages, functional languages, that did not provide any mechanisms for creating states (i.e., no global or local variables) and using such languages was touted as the solution to buggy code. The first half of the 80’s was full of computing PhD students implementing functional languages that had been designed by their supervisor, with the single application written by nearly all these languages being their own compiler.

Having to use a purely functional language to solve nontrivial problems proved to be mindbogglingly hard and support for local variables crept in and reading/writing files (which hold state) and of course global variables (but you must not use them because that would generate a side-effect; pointing to a use of a global variable in some postgrad’s code would result in agitated arm waving and references to a technique described in so-and-so’s paper which justified this particular use).

The functional world has moved on, or to be exact mathematical formalisms not exist that are capable of handling programs that have state. Modern users of functional languages don’t have any hangup about using global variables. The R community is something of a colonial outpost hanging on to views from a homeland of many years ago.

Isn’t the use of global variables recommended against in other languages? Yes and No. Many languages have different kinds of global variables, such as private and public (terms vary between languages); it is the use of public globals that may raise eyebrows, it may be ok to use them in certain ways but not others. The discussion in other languages revolves around higher level issues like information hiding and controlled access, ideas that R does not really have the language constructs to support (because R programs tend to be short there is rarely a need for such constructs).

Lets reformulate the question: “Is the use of global variables in R bad practice?”

The real question is: Given two programs, having identical external behavior, one that uses global variables and one that does not use global variables, which one will have the lowest economic cost? Economic cost here includes the time needed to figure out how to write the code and time to fix any bugs.

I am not aware of any empirical evidence, in any language, that answers this question (if you know of any please let me know). Any analysis of this question requires enumerating those problems where a solution involving a global variable might be thought to be worthwhile and comparing the global/nonglobal code; I know of a few snippets of such analysis in other languages.

Coming back to these long R functions, they often contain several for loops. Why are developers using for loops rather than the *ply functions? Is it because the *aply solution might require the use of a global variable, a cultural taboo that can be avoided by having everything in one function and using a for loop?

Next time somebody tells you that using global variables is bad practice you should ask for some evidence that backs that statement up.

I’m not saying that the use of global variables is good or bad, but that the issue is a complicated one. Enforcing a ‘no globals’ policy might just be moving the problem it was intended to solve to another place (inside long functions).