[Rd] Wish list
This is my New Year wishlist for R features. One
common thread is that I find I sometimes use languages
other than R including javascript, Windows batch and
gawk. Others have mentioned other languages too. It
would be nice if, in those cases I could use R
simplifying development into a single environment
(viz. R).
The following are not in any order.
1. Self Contained Executables
Make it possible to create self contained R
executables. Something like tcl starkits
http://www.equi4.com/starkit.html
or Python py2exe
http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe
is what I am thinking of. Its ok if they
are interpreted as long as its all transparent.
2. R as a Filter
Support using R as a filter analogously to
awk/gawk. e.g.
echo a x 3 | R -f myprog.R | findstr /i answer
echo a x 3 | R -e "chartr('x', 'X', readLines(STDIN()))" | findstr /i X
This would allow replacement of certain awk/gawk
filters with R. In the above STDIN or some
would refer to the echo output, not to further
input from the script. I think /dev/stdin
can already be used in UNIX but not in Windows.
3. Microsoft Active Scripting Language
Make R into a Microsoft Active Scripting
language. Nearly every other major scripting
language including perl, python, ruby, tcl,
oorexx, vbscript, jscript and others have
Microsoft Active Scripting support. This would
allow R to be used like javascript in HTML files
in Microsoft environments and also in any other
software that supports Microsoft's active
scripting interface.
4. Extend Clipboard Support to Non-Text Objects on
Windows
If one selects and copies a table in Internet
Explorer (IE) one can then paste it into Excel and
it comes out as expected with one Excel cell per
IE table cell. However, R does not currently
support this level of integration. (Current
workaround is to paste it into Excel and then copy
it back out of Excel. Excel will add tabs to the
text that is so copied.)
I understand that this feature may be in R 2.3.0
but am mentioning it for completeness.
5. Handhelds
Version(s) of R for handheld computers such as
Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry, etc.
UNIX-based handhelds would likely be simplest
but the others would likely be useful to a wider
audience.
6. Issue Tracking in Packages
Standard method of tracking issues in CRAN
packages. Provide svn and Trac support or
equivalent to CRAN package authors or at least
have a common change log mechanism. There is
currently no uniform way of finding out what has
changed in a package.
7. system
The arguments of "system(...)" should be extended
in various operating systems so that a consistent
set is available across them. Right now it works
differently under Windows and UNIX.
8. Extend Grid to Base Graphics
Rework base graphics so that they use grid
graphics underneath to the extent possible or else
leave them as is but have a version or package
that emulate them using grid graphics.
9. Eliminate Perl
Get rid of all use of perl within R. The parts
of R that use perl have not changed much probably
because its too onerous to have to deal with a
complex multilanguage setup. Eliminating perl might
speed up improvements in those areas. This mostly
affects the package buildin gprocess which could
then be rehosted within R as a package building
package.
10. Event Loop
Add an event loop mechanism to facilitate GUI
programming in R and also to facilitate the development
of facilities to allow higher levels of interaction
within grid graphics.
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Re: [Rd] Wish list
On 1/1/2006 8:47 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> This is my New Year wishlist for R features. One
> common thread is that I find I sometimes use languages
> other than R including javascript, Windows batch and
> gawk. Others have mentioned other languages too. It
> would be nice if, in those cases I could use R
> simplifying development into a single environment
> (viz. R).
>
> The following are not in any order.
>
> 1. Self Contained Executables
>
> Make it possible to create self contained R
> executables. Something like tcl starkits
> http://www.equi4.com/starkit.html
> or Python py2exe
> http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe
> is what I am thinking of. Its ok if they
> are interpreted as long as its all transparent.
How self-contained? It would be relatively easy to create small
executables that could make use of the DLLs in R_HOME. But that's
probably not useful if better support for your next suggestion was
there. If you want something that would run on a machine with no R
installed, that probably involves changing the linking scheme (at least
in Windows), and would not be so simple.
> 2. R as a Filter
>
> Support using R as a filter analogously to
> awk/gawk. e.g.
>
> echo a x 3 | R -f myprog.R | findstr /i answer
> echo a x 3 | R -e "chartr('x', 'X', readLines(STDIN()))" | findstr /i X
>
> This would allow replacement of certain awk/gawk
> filters with R. In the above STDIN or some
> would refer to the echo output, not to further
> input from the script. I think /dev/stdin
> can already be used in UNIX but not in Windows.
>
> 3. Microsoft Active Scripting Language
>
> Make R into a Microsoft Active Scripting
> language. Nearly every other major scripting
> language including perl, python, ruby, tcl,
> oorexx, vbscript, jscript and others have
> Microsoft Active Scripting support. This would
> allow R to be used like javascript in HTML files
> in Microsoft environments and also in any other
> software that supports Microsoft's active
> scripting interface.
R is not designed to be secure. I think this would be a very risky
thing to do.
>
> 4. Extend Clipboard Support to Non-Text Objects on
> Windows
>
> If one selects and copies a table in Internet
> Explorer (IE) one can then paste it into Excel and
> it comes out as expected with one Excel cell per
> IE table cell. However, R does not currently
> support this level of integration. (Current
> workaround is to paste it into Excel and then copy
> it back out of Excel. Excel will add tabs to the
> text that is so copied.)
>
> I understand that this feature may be in R 2.3.0
> but am mentioning it for completeness.
Yes, I wrote some functions to do some of this, but I haven't committed
them to the trunk. I didn't like the user interface much: using
clipboard support depends heavily on being able to handle the various
clipboard format constants (CF_BITMAP, etc.), and R doesn't handle
constants well. I'll take another look at them and see if I get any
inspiration on how to make them palatable.
> 5. Handhelds
>
> Version(s) of R for handheld computers such as
> Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry, etc.
> UNIX-based handhelds would likely be simplest
> but the others would likely be useful to a wider
> audience.
All this needs is someone who wants to gather/create the tools and start
building the binaries.
> 6. Issue Tracking in Packages
>
> Standard method of tracking issues in CRAN
> packages. Provide svn and Trac support or
> equivalent to CRAN package authors or at least
> have a common change log mechanism. There is
> currently no uniform way of finding out what has
> changed in a package.
>
> 7. system
>
> The arguments of "system(...)" should be extended
> in various operating systems so that a consistent
> set is available across them. Right now it works
> differently under Windows and UNIX.
>
> 8. Extend Grid to Base Graphics
>
> Rework base graphics so that they use grid
> graphics underneath to the extent possible or else
> leave them as is but have a version or package
> that emulate them using grid graphics.
This sounds like the gridBase package.
> 9. Eliminate Perl
>
> Get rid of all use of perl within R. The parts
> of R that use perl have not changed much probably
> because its too onerous to have to deal with a
> complex multilanguage setup. Eliminating perl might
> speed up improvements in those areas. This mostly
> affects the package buildin gprocess which could
> then be rehosted within R as a package building
> package.
> 10. Event Loop
>
> Add an event loop mechanism to facilitate GUI
> programming in R and also to facilitate the development
> of facilities to allow higher levels of interaction
> within grid graphics.
There is such a thing now: see the Writing R Extensions manual. It
still needs work, but people using it and suggesting improvements will help.
Duncan Murdoch
__
R-dev
Re: [Rd] Wish list
On 1/1/06, Duncan Murdoch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 1/1/2006 8:47 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> > This is my New Year wishlist for R features. One
> > common thread is that I find I sometimes use languages
> > other than R including javascript, Windows batch and
> > gawk. Others have mentioned other languages too. It
> > would be nice if, in those cases I could use R
> > simplifying development into a single environment
> > (viz. R).
> >
> > The following are not in any order.
> >
> > 1. Self Contained Executables
> >
> > Make it possible to create self contained R
> > executables. Something like tcl starkits
> > http://www.equi4.com/starkit.html
> > or Python py2exe
> > http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe
> > is what I am thinking of. Its ok if they
> > are interpreted as long as its all transparent.
>
> How self-contained? It would be relatively easy to create small
Similar to tcl starkits and pyexe. You can just send someone
an .exe and they can run it. They don't have to have any software
or files other than that. Or suppose I want to write an R configuration
facility and don't know which version of R is on the machine or even
if R is on the machine. Currently I use batch files or javascript to
do this (see http://cran.r-project.org/contrib/extra/batchfiles/) since
one does not want to have configure the configurer. I would actually
prefer to leverage my knowledge of R and not have to go to the
lengths of using a different language.
> executables that could make use of the DLLs in R_HOME. But that's
> probably not useful if better support for your next suggestion was
> there. If you want something that would run on a machine with no R
> installed, that probably involves changing the linking scheme (at least
> in Windows), and would not be so simple.
>
> > 2. R as a Filter
> >
> > Support using R as a filter analogously to
> > awk/gawk. e.g.
> >
> > echo a x 3 | R -f myprog.R | findstr /i answer
> > echo a x 3 | R -e "chartr('x', 'X', readLines(STDIN()))" | findstr /i X
> >
> > This would allow replacement of certain awk/gawk
> > filters with R. In the above STDIN or some
> > would refer to the echo output, not to further
> > input from the script. I think /dev/stdin
> > can already be used in UNIX but not in Windows.
> >
> > 3. Microsoft Active Scripting Language
> >
> > Make R into a Microsoft Active Scripting
> > language. Nearly every other major scripting
> > language including perl, python, ruby, tcl,
> > oorexx, vbscript, jscript and others have
> > Microsoft Active Scripting support. This would
> > allow R to be used like javascript in HTML files
> > in Microsoft environments and also in any other
> > software that supports Microsoft's active
> > scripting interface.
>
> R is not designed to be secure. I think this would be a very risky
> thing to do.
Some alternatives are:
- restrict execution to .hta's (which are html files that are restricted to
run locally -- they can't be run from a browser).
- do the work to separate out the OS dependent items into libraries
so that access can be restricted similarly to what vscript and jscript
have done with wsh.
- perhaps there is some way for the user to accept or reject such
applications as trusted or not?
> >
> > 8. Extend Grid to Base Graphics
> >
> > Rework base graphics so that they use grid
> > graphics underneath to the extent possible or else
> > leave them as is but have a version or package
> > that emulate them using grid graphics.
>
> This sounds like the gridBase package.
Correct me if I am mistaken here but
my understanding is that this makes it possible to use
grid and standard graphics together but does not produce
grobs for all the elements of a graphic like doing it from
the bottom up would.
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Re: [Rd] Wish list
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1
Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> This is my New Year wishlist for R features. One
> common thread is that I find I sometimes use languages
> other than R including javascript, Windows batch and
> gawk. Others have mentioned other languages too. It
> would be nice if, in those cases I could use R
> simplifying development into a single environment
> (viz. R).
>
> The following are not in any order.
>
> 1. Self Contained Executables
>
> Make it possible to create self contained R
> executables. Something like tcl starkits
> http://www.equi4.com/starkit.html
> or Python py2exe
> http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe
> is what I am thinking of. Its ok if they
> are interpreted as long as its all transparent.
>
We have been thinking of this, for me in the context
of putting R on small sensor network nodes.
> 2. R as a Filter
>
> Support using R as a filter analogously to
> awk/gawk. e.g.
>
> echo a x 3 | R -f myprog.R | findstr /i answer
> echo a x 3 | R -e "chartr('x', 'X', readLines(STDIN()))" | findstr /i X
>
> This would allow replacement of certain awk/gawk
> filters with R. In the above STDIN or some
> would refer to the echo output, not to further
> input from the script. I think /dev/stdin
> can already be used in UNIX but not in Windows.
>
This has been in the works for a long time and I still dislike two
small pieces of the solution that make it limited.
> 3. Microsoft Active Scripting Language
>
> Make R into a Microsoft Active Scripting
> language. Nearly every other major scripting
> language including perl, python, ruby, tcl,
> oorexx, vbscript, jscript and others have
> Microsoft Active Scripting support. This would
> allow R to be used like javascript in HTML files
> in Microsoft environments and also in any other
> software that supports Microsoft's active
> scripting interface.
Yes not that hard to do given the work in other interfaces,
but I wish the Windows users would contribute it.
>
> 4. Extend Clipboard Support to Non-Text Objects on
> Windows
>
> If one selects and copies a table in Internet
> Explorer (IE) one can then paste it into Excel and
> it comes out as expected with one Excel cell per
> IE table cell. However, R does not currently
> support this level of integration. (Current
> workaround is to paste it into Excel and then copy
> it back out of Excel. Excel will add tabs to the
> text that is so copied.)
>
> I understand that this feature may be in R 2.3.0
> but am mentioning it for completeness.
>
> 5. Handhelds
>
> Version(s) of R for handheld computers such as
> Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry, etc.
> UNIX-based handhelds would likely be simplest
> but the others would likely be useful to a wider
> audience.
>
> 6. Issue Tracking in Packages
>
> Standard method of tracking issues in CRAN
> packages. Provide svn and Trac support or
> equivalent to CRAN package authors or at least
> have a common change log mechanism. There is
> currently no uniform way of finding out what has
> changed in a package.
>
> 7. system
>
> The arguments of "system(...)" should be extended
> in various operating systems so that a consistent
> set is available across them. Right now it works
> differently under Windows and UNIX.
>
> 8. Extend Grid to Base Graphics
>
> Rework base graphics so that they use grid
> graphics underneath to the extent possible or else
> leave them as is but have a version or package
> that emulate them using grid graphics.
>
> 9. Eliminate Perl
>
> Get rid of all use of perl within R. The parts
> of R that use perl have not changed much probably
> because its too onerous to have to deal with a
> complex multilanguage setup. Eliminating perl might
> speed up improvements in those areas. This mostly
> affects the package buildin gprocess which could
> then be rehosted within R as a package building
> package.
There is some work in progress on an extensible, R-based
package mechanism.
>
> 10. Event Loop
>
> Add an event loop mechanism to facilitate GUI
> programming in R and also to facilitate the development
> of facilities to allow higher levels of interaction
> within grid graphics.
>
Well, there has been work on this that people couldn't agree on.
And while we are on the topic of wishlists...
Generally (i.e. not directed specifically to Gabor),
the suggestions are very welcome, but so are contributions.
And for issues such as making the existing R available on handhelds,
that is a programming task. And I draw a large distinction between
programming and creative research which is based on new concepts and
paradigms. The pool of people working in statistical computing research
is very small. And to a large extent, their time is consumed with
programming - making the same thing work on multiple platforms,
correcting documentation, etc. which are good things, but
not obviously the best use of available research ability and time.
There
Re: [Rd] Enhancement request: anonymous connections
On 12/28/2005 9:50 AM, Seth Falcon wrote:
> On 27 Dec 2005, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>>This is a bug in load, isn't it? load() opens the connection but
>>doesn't close it.
>
>
> Well, it may be that load needs a small fix, but that doesn't fix
> anonymous connections in general, IMO.
No it doesn't. However, I've committed the small fix.
>
> The loop could easily have been:
>
> for (i in 1:50) {
> print(load(url(testUrl, open="r")))
> }
>
> And it doesn't need to be related to url or load:
>
> cat("a line of text\n", file="another-example.txt")
> z <- NULL
> for (i in 1:50) {
> z <- c(z, readLines(file("another-example.txt", open="r")))
> }
>
> Also, connections are "in use" even if they are closed:
>
> for (i in 1:50) {
> if (isOpen(file("another-example.txt")))
> stop("you will not get here")
> }
I think the general problem is that R doesn't have references (or at
least, they aren't in a final, documented state). If the garbage
collector closed a connection, then things would go wrong when there
were two copies of it: the second one would be messed up when the first
was destroyed. If we had references, then opening a connection could
create a connection object and a reference to it; the connection object
would remain as long as there were any references to it, and could be
destroyed (and automatically closed) after the last reference was gone.
Duncan Murdoch
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Re: [Rd] Enhancement request: anonymous connections
On Sun, 1 Jan 2006, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 12/28/2005 9:50 AM, Seth Falcon wrote:
>> On 27 Dec 2005, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>
>>> This is a bug in load, isn't it? load() opens the connection but
>>> doesn't close it.
>>
>>
>> Well, it may be that load needs a small fix, but that doesn't fix
>> anonymous connections in general, IMO.
>
> No it doesn't. However, I've committed the small fix.
It was not even a bug in load: close() and open() are not pairs. (I
didn't pick the names!) Your `fix' destroys a connection, which is
not the documented behaviour and far more dangerous than leaving it open.
The lifecycle of a connection is (see e.g. my R-news article)
create->open->close->destroy
and close() does both of the last two. Please revert this change.
Ideally we would close and not destroy if the connection was opened, but
that needs a better C-level interface in place of this R-level one.
>> The loop could easily have been:
>>
>> for (i in 1:50) {
>> print(load(url(testUrl, open="r")))
>> }
>>
>> And it doesn't need to be related to url or load:
>>
>> cat("a line of text\n", file="another-example.txt")
>> z <- NULL
>> for (i in 1:50) {
>> z <- c(z, readLines(file("another-example.txt", open="r")))
>> }
>>
>> Also, connections are "in use" even if they are closed:
>>
>> for (i in 1:50) {
>> if (isOpen(file("another-example.txt")))
>> stop("you will not get here")
>> }
>
> I think the general problem is that R doesn't have references (or at
> least, they aren't in a final, documented state). If the garbage
> collector closed a connection, then things would go wrong when there
> were two copies of it: the second one would be messed up when the first
> was destroyed. If we had references, then opening a connection could
> create a connection object and a reference to it; the connection object
> would remain as long as there were any references to it, and could be
> destroyed (and automatically closed) after the last reference was gone.
However, that just isn't how connections are documented in the Green Book
(referenced on all the relevant help pages, so required reading) and
getConnection() allows you to create an R object pointing to a connection
that previously had none. The OP has never told us what `anonymous
connections' are, but it is quite possible that his unstated ideas are
incompatible with the documentation.
--
Brian D. Ripley, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UKFax: +44 1865 272595
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Re: [Rd] Wish list
Duncan Temple Lang wrote: >And while we are on the topic of wishlists... >Generally (i.e. not directed specifically to Gabor), >the suggestions are very welcome, but so are contributions. >And for issues such as making the existing R available on handhelds, >that is a programming task. > Hasn't someone ported R to the Sharp Zaurus, for which both the Linux kernel and a more or less complete GNU toolchain exist, plus at least two GUI builders? I've forgotten what the compiler version is -- it might be back around 2.95. In any event, one of the Lisps and Maxima have been ported to the Zaurus. I'm not sure how well a number crunching application like R would run on the Zaurus processor, though -- IIRC the floating point is emulated in software. Isn't the same true for Palms and Windows CE PDAs? >And I draw a large distinction between >programming and creative research which is based on new concepts and >paradigms. The pool of people working in statistical computing research >is very small. And to a large extent, their time is consumed with >programming - making the same thing work on multiple platforms, >correcting documentation, etc. which are good things, but >not obviously the best use of available research ability and time. >There are many more topics that are in progress that represent >changes to what we can do rather than just to how we do the same thing. > > I'd much rather have changes to what we can do rather than how we do the same thing! As the Perl folks say, "There's more than one way to do it!" So keep R and its contributed packages focused on making the first few ways to do something new! >One of the reasons S (R and S-Plus) is where it is now >is because in Bell Labs, the idea was to be thinking >5 years ahead and both meeting and directing the needs for the future. >Because of R's popularity (somewhat related to it being free), there is >an aspect of development that focuses more on software for statisticians >to use "right now". >Obviously, th development is a mixture of both the current and the >future, but there is less of the future and certainly less of the >longer term directions that is sacrificed by the need to maintain an >existing system and be backward-compatible. >If statistics is to fulfill its potential in this modern IT, we need new >ideas and research into those new ideas. If we focus on basic >programming tasks (however complex) and demand usability above concepts, >we risk losing those whose primary focus is in statistical computing >research from the field. > > Amen! Please don't turn R into Perl! The Perl community has statistical libraries for the basics. If that's all you want to do, just learn how to do it in Perl. The same goes for Python and Ruby. All the scripting languages can be used for basic statistical and numeric processing, and their communities are adding libraries for more advanced functionality all the time. But no other language/community has the breadth of advanced statistical processing that R and its contributed packages have, and no other language has the right core semantics to make this kind of computing easy, with the possible exception of the newest dialects of Fortran. I *could* write a web ecommerce site in R if I wanted to, but why would I? I'd do that in PHP or the new Ruby on Rails, because that's what those languages were designed to do well! >While R provides statisticians and stat. comp. researchers with a >terrific vehicle for doing their respective work, it also acts as >a constraint for doing anything even moderately new. But much (not all) >of R is based on innovations from the 1970's, 80's and 90's. And >as IT evolves at a terrific pace, to keep up with it, we need to be >forward looking. > > Could you elaborate on the nature of the constraints R imposes? Obviously there are *time* constraints made necessary by the programming tasks and finite number of community members, but are there limits to the kinds of scientific/statistical computing thoughts one can think if one only uses R and its contributed packages? >I'll leave it there - for the moment - and go fight off the ants >that are invading my desk! While I wrote this down relatively >rapidly, the ideas have been brewing for a long time. If anyone >wishes to comment on the theme, I hope they will take a few minutes >to think about the broad set of issues and tradeoffs. > > I've been thinking about related issues over the holiday break, mostly triggered by Paul Graham's essay on a programming language that would last 100 years. The essay will appear on my blog in the near future. Meanwhile, I'll add my wish list (and list of things I'd work on in my spare time if I had any :) ) for R. 1. An integrated symbolic math capability. I think packaging GiNaC (http://freshmeat.net/projects/ginac/) is the logical way to do this. GiNaC is a C++ library, and I suspect it could be easily packaged, but I haven't tried it yet. If someone is ahea
Re: [Rd] Enhancement request: anonymous connections
On 1/1/2006 1:05 PM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Jan 2006, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>
>
>>On 12/28/2005 9:50 AM, Seth Falcon wrote:
>>
>>>On 27 Dec 2005, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>>
>>>
This is a bug in load, isn't it? load() opens the connection but
doesn't close it.
>>>
>>>
>>>Well, it may be that load needs a small fix, but that doesn't fix
>>>anonymous connections in general, IMO.
>>
>>No it doesn't. However, I've committed the small fix.
>
>
> It was not even a bug in load: close() and open() are not pairs. (I
> didn't pick the names!) Your `fix' destroys a connection, which is
> not the documented behaviour and far more dangerous than leaving it open.
>
> The lifecycle of a connection is (see e.g. my R-news article)
>
> create->open->close->destroy
>
> and close() does both of the last two. Please revert this change.
> Ideally we would close and not destroy if the connection was opened, but
> that needs a better C-level interface in place of this R-level one.
Sorry about that. I've done the reversion.
Is it worth putting that C-level interface in place to make load() more
compatible with ?connections which says,
'open' opens a connection. In general functions using connections
will open them if they are not open, but then close them again, so
to leave a connection open call 'open' explicitly.
? I suppose a natural way to do it would be to add a "destroy=TRUE"
argument to close(), and then have load() do
on.exit(close(con, destroy=FALSE))
but maybe it would be better to add a separate function to do this, for
better green book compatibility.
Duncan Murdoch
>
>
>>>The loop could easily have been:
>>>
>>>for (i in 1:50) {
>>>print(load(url(testUrl, open="r")))
>>>}
>>>
>>>And it doesn't need to be related to url or load:
>>>
>>>cat("a line of text\n", file="another-example.txt")
>>>z <- NULL
>>>for (i in 1:50) {
>>>z <- c(z, readLines(file("another-example.txt", open="r")))
>>>}
>>>
>>>Also, connections are "in use" even if they are closed:
>>>
>>>for (i in 1:50) {
>>>if (isOpen(file("another-example.txt")))
>>>stop("you will not get here")
>>>}
>>
>>I think the general problem is that R doesn't have references (or at
>>least, they aren't in a final, documented state). If the garbage
>>collector closed a connection, then things would go wrong when there
>>were two copies of it: the second one would be messed up when the first
>>was destroyed. If we had references, then opening a connection could
>>create a connection object and a reference to it; the connection object
>>would remain as long as there were any references to it, and could be
>>destroyed (and automatically closed) after the last reference was gone.
>
>
> However, that just isn't how connections are documented in the Green Book
> (referenced on all the relevant help pages, so required reading) and
> getConnection() allows you to create an R object pointing to a connection
> that previously had none. The OP has never told us what `anonymous
> connections' are, but it is quite possible that his unstated ideas are
> incompatible with the documentation.
>
__
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[Rd] sealed namespaces and lockEnvironment
Dear R-devel I'm experimenting with easy-to-use ways for a package maintainer to modify a"live" package-- i.e. while it's loaded & in use. One difficulty is that packages with namespaces are usually sealed with 'lockEnvironment', which means you can't add/remove objects. After some effort, I've managed to bypass the sealing step, and the live-editing seems to be working pretty well. However, there are reasons for sealing (e.g. in Luke Tierney's article in R-news 3/1). Which disasters am I really courting by not sealing the namespace? NB 1: non-sealing only happens during development by the package maintainer, so some rough edges are tolerable. and 2: the only alternative I can think of-- and it's less satisfactory anyway-- involves changing the namespace's parent environment using 'parent.env<-', which comes with even more dire warnings... thanks Mark Bravington __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] R on Zaurus (was: Wish list)
On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 11:08:42AM -0800, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > > Hasn't someone ported R to the Sharp Zaurus, Yes, Simon Pickering did this. I ran his version of R on a Zaurus two years ago. His site implies that development is still underway. http://people.bath.ac.uk/enpsgp/Zaurus/index.html > I'm not sure how well a number crunching application like R would > run on the Zaurus processor, though -- IIRC the floating point is > emulated in software. It was slow :). Also I never got it to work with X, but in fairness I didn't really try hard. Simon's site implies that improvements are being implemented. Cheers Andrew -- Andrew Robinson Senior Lecturer in Statistics Tel: +61-3-8344-9763 Department of Mathematics and StatisticsFax: +61-3-8344-4599 University of Melbourne, VIC 3010 Australia Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Website: http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
