Good code style is like good punctuation: not required, but essential for readability and collaboration.

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🔤 4.1 Variable Naming

• Use lowercase, underscores _, and clear, descriptive names

• ✅ short_flights <- flights |> filter(air_time < 60)

• ❌ SHORTFLIGHTS <- flights |> filter(air_time < 60)

• Prefer prefixes (helps with autocompletion)

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␣ 4.2 Spaces

• Add spaces around +, -, ==, <, and <- (but not ^)

• No spaces around parentheses in function calls

• Use spaces after commas

• Align = in mutate() or similar for readability:

flights |> 
  mutate(
    speed      = distance / air_time,
    dep_hour   = dep_time %/% 100,
    dep_minute = dep_time %%  100
  )

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🔗 4.3 Pipes |>

• Always have a space before |> and place at end of line

• Chain each verb on its own line

• Indent each step by 2 spaces

• For named arguments, put each on its own line

• Keep pipelines short (split and name intermediate steps if too long)

flights |>  
  group_by(tailnum) |> 
  summarize(
    delay = mean(arr_delay, na.rm = TRUE),
    n = n()
  )

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📈 4.4 ggplot2 Formatting

• Use + like |> (space before, at end of line)

• Long argument lists → one per line

• Indent consistently

ggplot(data, aes(x, y)) +
  geom_point() +
  geom_smooth(
    method = "loess",
    span = 0.5,
    se = FALSE
  )

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🧩 4.5 Sectioning Comments

Use headers to organize long scripts:

# Load data -------------------------------------------------
 
# Clean data ------------------------------------------------
 
# Visualize -------------------------------------------------

Shortcut in RStudio: Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + R

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🛠 Tools

• Use the {styler} package to auto-format code:
• Use via RStudio’s command palette (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + P → “styler”)
• quite useful

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📌 4.7 Summary

• A consistent style improves collaboration and future debugging.

• Follow tidyverse conventions for naming, spacing, and pipes.

• Use styler to clean up messy code.