Why do the closing and opening brackets ({ and }) of R if statments have to be in this complex multiple line format instead of a simple, single line format?

[GildedCrowEscapee]

beginner to R and programming in general. Currently taking a beginner's course and was just wondering why an if statment had to be in this format:

if (nrow(recent_grads) > 1000) { 
    data_size <- "Large" 
    } else {
        data_size <- "Small"
    }

where the { and } characters have to be on seperate lines, as opposed to something more simple such as:

if (nrow(recent_grads) > 1000) { data_size <- "Large" }
  else {data_size <- "Small”}

Thanks for the help in advance.

[FJCC]

My understanding of the rules for if statements is as follows. Brackets are used to enclose multiple statements. If you only have a single statement in the if and the else, as in your case, the brackets are not required. If there is a right bracket, }, before the else, it must be on the same line as the else. All of the following work

if (x > 1000) data_size <- "Large" else  data_size <- "Small"

if (x > 1000) {data_size <- "Large"} else  data_size <- "Small"

if (x > 1000) {data_size <- "Large"
  } else  data_size <- "Small"

[GildedCrowEscapee]

Thank you FJCC! I just wanted to clarify, what did you mean by 'multiple statements' in the if statement and could you give an example?

[pathos]

They can be in one line if you want. It's just a standard in the coding world for readability, not exclusive to R. I have different standards for myself, but when in a collaborative team, I use lintr (code linter for R).

You can see some sample code below in other languages and you'll see that they are formatted similarly.

https://google.github.io/styleguide/javaguide.html

C# at Google Style Guide

[FJCC]

Here is an example of an if statement containing multiple statements.

if (x > 1000) {
  data_size <- "Large"
  data_color <- "red"
  data_shape = "round"
  } else  {
  data_size <- "Small"
  data_color <- "blue"
  data_shape = "square"
}

Both the if and the else set the value of three variables.

[GildedCrowEscapee]

Great, thank you so much!! I understand now : )