Simon Urbanek wrote:
>
> On Dec 8, 2006, at 9:51 AM, Erik van Zijst wrote:
>
>> 2. R's native C-api
>> [http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.html#The-R-API] does not
>> separate parsing from evaluation.
N.B. above I mistakenly referred to chapter "The R API", but instead I
was referring to what I read in "Linking GUIs and other front-ends to R".
> Actually it does - see "R_ParseVector" and "eval". You're free to run
> the parser once (or even construct the expression directly) and evaluate
> it many times. (Also note that you can serialize the parsed expression
> if desired).
I think I saw that code fragment, but was under the impression that it
illustrated how to interact with the R runtime from within a C function
that is invoked from R (R -> C -> R), rather than directly from C. I'll
certainly explore this further, thanks for pointing this out.
> If your worries are really at this level, then you will have to create
> entirely your own solution, because the overhead of IPC will be way more
> that the time spent in the parser. Actually I'm wondering whether you
> checked it at all, because I'd almost certainly expect the evaluation to
> take way more time than the parsing step. If it does, I'd be inclined to
> think that you have rather a design problem.
Your suspicion is correct Simon, I'm afraid I have not tested anything
yet, so I'm not sure my worries are justified at all. I'm also entirely
new to R and I'm not a statistician. I'm involved in this project as a
systems architect and responsible for choosing a dynamic, programmable
evaluation environment. Since it'll be all about financial data analysis
(with analysts currently using matlab and stata on the desktop) I
studied the area and R surfaced as the most interesting candidate. But
as you suggest, before we embark on actual development, I need to verify
that integration of R is feasible in this design. I apologize if this
yields somewhat elementary questions.
What is your opinion on parallel evaluation of expressions? Is that
possible in a single R engine instance, or would I need to create a pool
of instances with IPC like R/Apache does?
cheers,
Erik
--
QOTD:
"I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent."
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