| NumericConstants {base} | R Documentation |
How R parses numeric constants.
R parses numeric constants in its input in a very similar way to C floating-point constants.
Inf and NaN are numeric constants (with
typeof(.) "double"). All other numeric constants start
with a digit or period.
Hexadecimal constants start with 0x or 0X followed by
a non-empty sequence from 0-9 a-f A-F which is interpreted as a
hexadecimal number ("double", not "integer").
Decimal constants consists of a nonempty sequence of digits possibly
containing a period (the decimal point), optionally followed by a
decimal exponent. A decimal exponent consists of an E or
e followed by an optional plus or minus sign followed by a
non-empty sequence of digits, and indicates multiplication by a power
of ten.
A numeric constant immediately followed by i is regarded as an
imaginary complex number.
An numeric constant immediately followed by L is regarded as an
integer number when possible (and with a warning if it
contains a ".").
Only the ASCII digits 0–9 are recognized as digits, even in languages which have other representations of digits. The ‘decimal separator’ is always a period and never a comma.
Note that a leading plus or minus is not part of numeric constant but a unary operator applied to the constant.
Quotes for the parsing of character constants,
2.1 typeof(2) sqrt(1i) # remember elementary math? utils::str(0xA0) identical(1L, as.integer(1)) ## You can combine the "0x" prefix with the "L" suffix : identical(0xFL, as.integer(15)) # (with a regard to Fritz :-)