[RkWard-devel] Code generated for "multi action" plugins

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi!

While reviewing some plugins, I came across an issue that we should probably 
have a policy for, but currently don't:

Many plugins *can* do more than one thing. E.g. the descriptive statistics 
plugins will compute (among other things) either the mean, or the median, or 
both.

Currently the code generated for that is something like:

rk.temp.options <- list (domean=1, domedian=0)
for (...) {
	if (rk.temp.options$domean) rk.temp.results$mean[i] <- ...
	if (rk.temp.options$domedian) rk.temp.results$median[i] <- ...
}
...

This approach has the advantage, that a user could copy the entire code 
snippet, and simply change the "domedian" option to 1 to run the same 
calculation including the median.

However, another approach is to only generate code for the chosen options. 
I.e., if mean is selected, but not median, only the following would be 
generated:

for (...) {
	rk.temp.results$mean[i] <- ...
}
...

While if both are selected, 

for (...) {
	rk.temp.results$mean[i] <- ...
	rk.temp.results$median[i] <- ...
}
...

would be generated. This second approach clearly has the advantage of keeping 
the generated code shorter, and more readable (at the cost of making the 
required logic to generate the code slightly more complex, but this would not 
be user visible).

While writing this, I'm inclined to think the second approach is more elegant 
overall, and should be preferred. Still, the first approach is more prevalent 
in current plugins, and does have one advantage mentioned above. What do you 
think, which style we should favor in rkward?

Regards
Thomas
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