[r] R: += (plus equals) and ++ (plus plus) equivalent from c++/c#/java, etc.?

Does R have a concept of += (plus equals) or ++ (plus plus) as c++/c#/others do?

Increment and decrement by 10.

require(Hmisc)
inc(x) <- 10 

dec(x) <- 10

R doesn't have these operations because (most) objects in R are immutable. They do not change. Typically, when it looks like you're modifying an object, you're actually modifying a copy.

Following @GregaKešpret you can make an infix operator:

`%+=%` = function(e1,e2) eval.parent(substitute(e1 <- e1 + e2))
x = 1
x %+=% 2 ; x

R doesn't have a concept of increment operator (as for example ++ in C). However, it is not difficult to implement one yourself, for example:

inc <- function(x)
{
 eval.parent(substitute(x <- x + 1))
}

In that case you would call

x <- 10
inc(x)

However, it introduces function call overhead, so it's slower than typing x <- x + 1 yourself. If I'm not mistaken increment operator was introduced to make job for compiler easier, as it could convert the code to those machine language instructions directly.

We can override +. If unary + is used and its argument is itself an unary + call, then increment the relevant variable in the calling environment.

`+` <- function(e1,e2){
    # if unary `+`, keep original behavior
    if(missing(e2)) {
      s_e1 <- substitute(e1)
      # if e1 (the argument of unary +) is itself an unary `+` operation
      if(length(s_e1) == 2 && 
         identical(s_e1[[1]], quote(`+`)) && 
         length(s_e1[[2]]) == 1) {
        # increment value in parent environment
        eval.parent(substitute(e1 <- e1 + 1, list(e1 = s_e1[[2]])))
      # else unary `+` should just return it's input
      } else e1
    # if binary `+`, keep original behavior
    } else .Primitive("+")(e1, e2)
}

x <- 10
++x
x
# [1] 11

other operations don't change :

x + 2
# [1] 13
x ++ 2
# [1] 13
+x
# [1] 11
x
# [1] 11

Don't do it though, as you'll slow down everything. Or do it in another environment and make sure you don't have big loops on these instructions.

You can also just do this :

`++` <- function(x) eval.parent(substitute(x <- x + 1))
a <- 1
`++`(a)
a
# [1] 2

We released a package, roperators, to help with this kind of thing. You can read more about it here: https://happylittlescripts.blogspot.com/2018/09/make-your-r-code-nicer-with-roperators.html

install.packages('roperators')
require(roperators)

x <- 1:3
x %+=% 1; x
x %-=% 3; x
y <- c('a', 'b', 'c')
y %+=% 'text'; y
y %-=% 'text'; y

# etc

We can also use inplace

library(inplace)
x <- 1
x %+<-% 2