Increment operators like "+=" in R?

[Allen]

Hi, All,

There are increment operators in many other programming languages, where x=x+1 can be written as x++ or x+=1. But R doesn't seem to have things like this.

So are there easier ways to write code for

a.variable.with.a.very.long.name=a.variable.with.a.very.long.name+1 ?

[Noam Ross]

R does not have an increment operator in base language, but it's implemented in the `Hmisc` package.  Instead of writing

    x <- x +1

you write

    inc(x) <- 1

The `dec` function does the same, but subtracts instead of adds.