Assignment in R language

Question

I am wondering how assignment works in the R language.

Consider the following R shell session:

> x <- c(5, 6, 7)
> x[1] <- 10
> x
[1] 10 6         


        

Answer 1

It seems to me that one can only assign values to named data structures (like 'x').

That's precisely what the documentation for ?"<-" says:

Description:

 Assign a value to a name.

x[1] <- 10 doesn't use the same function as x <- c(5, 6, 7). The former calls [<- while the latter calls <-.