[proverbialbunny]

>The language allows two kinds of assignment operators even: a=1 or a <- 1 that are "almost" identical

The <- assignment is normal for functional programming languages. F#, OCaml, S, and more use this operator. This is because the arrow key used to be a physical key on keyboards back in the 70s when FPP was popular and brand new.

The = sign (function assignment operator) is function level scope and <- (assignment operator) is top level scope.

eg:

    median(x = 1:10)
    x  ## Error object 'x' not found

    median(y <- 1:10)
    y  ## [1] 5.5

So therefor,

    x <- 1:10
    median(x)

is equivalent to

    median(x <- 1:10)

It's a convenient feature the language supports. The alternative is how Python does while loops. If anything, R comes out above in this regard.

edit: Python has the := operator which functions the same way <- does in R. I guess Python is catching up on this one.

eg (Python):

    env_base = os.environ.get("PYTHONUSERBASE", None)
    if env_base:
        return env_base

vs

    if env_base := os.environ.get("PYTHONUSERBASE", None):
        return env_base

[Cosi1125]

Note that `median((x = 10)); x` works fine :-)