Various Programming Utilities

Utility functions useful when programming and developing R packages.

S3 Methods Simplified

Methods that simplify the setup of S3 generic functions and S3 methods. Major effort has been made in making definition of methods as simple as possible with a minimum of maintenance for package developers. For example, generic functions are created automatically, if missing, and naming conflict are automatically solved, if possible. The method setMethodS3() is a good start for those who in the future may want to migrate to S4. This is a cross-platform package implemented in pure R that generates standard S3 methods.

Functions that Apply to Rows and Columns of Matrices (and to Vectors)

High-performing functions operating on rows and columns of matrices, e.g. col / rowMedians(), col / rowRanks(), and col / rowSds(). Functions optimized per data type and for subsetted calculations such that both memory usage and processing time is minimized. There are also optimized vector-based methods, e.g. binMeans(), madDiff() and weightedMedian().

R Object-Oriented Programming with or without References

Methods and classes for object-oriented programming in R with or without references. Large effort has been made on making definition of methods as simple as possible with a minimum of maintenance for package developers. The package has been developed since 2001 and is now considered very stable. This is a cross-platform package implemented in pure R that defines standard S3 classes without any tricks.

Dynamic Generation of Scientific Reports

The RSP markup language makes any text-based document come alive. RSP provides a powerful markup for controlling the content and output of LaTeX, HTML, Markdown, AsciiDoc, Sweave and knitr documents (and more), e.g. 'Today's date is <%=Sys.Date()%>'. Contrary to many other literate programming languages, with RSP it is straightforward to loop over mixtures of code and text sections, e.g. in month-by-month summaries. RSP has also several preprocessing directives for incorporating static and dynamic contents of external files (local or online) among other things. Functions rstring() and rcat() make it easy to process RSP strings, rsource() sources an RSP file as it was an R script, while rfile() compiles it (even online) into its final output format, e.g. rfile('report.tex.rsp') generates 'report.pdf' and rfile('report.md.rsp') generates 'report.html'. RSP is ideal for self-contained scientific reports and R package vignettes. It's easy to use - if you know how to write an R script, you'll be up and running within minutes.

Read and Write MAT Files and Call MATLAB from Within R

Methods readMat() and writeMat() for reading and writing MAT files. For user with MATLAB v6 or newer installed (either locally or on a remote host), the package also provides methods for controlling MATLAB (trademark) via R and sending and retrieving data between R and MATLAB.

Fast and Light-Weight Caching (Memoization) of Objects and Results to Speed Up Computations

Memoization can be used to speed up repetitive and computational expensive function calls. The first time a function that implements memoization is called the results are stored in a cache memory. The next time the function is called with the same set of parameters, the results are momentarily retrieved from the cache avoiding repeating the calculations. With this package, any R object can be cached in a key-value storage where the key can be an arbitrary set of R objects. The cache memory is persistent (on the file system).

Unified Handling of Graphics Devices

Functions for creating plots and image files in a unified way regardless of output format (EPS, PDF, PNG, SVG, TIFF, WMF, etc.). Default device options as well as scales and aspect ratios are controlled in a uniform way across all device types. Switching output format requires minimal changes in code. This package is ideal for large-scale batch processing, because it will never leave open graphics devices or incomplete image files behind, even on errors or user interrupts.

Easy Handling of and Access to Files Organized in Structured Directories

A file set refers to a set of files located in one or more directories on the file system. This package provides classes and methods to locate, setup, subset, navigate and iterate such sets. The API is designed such that these classes can be extended via inheritance to provide a richer API for special file formats. Moreover, a specific name format is defined such that filenames and directories can be considered to have full names which consists of a name followed by comma-separated tags. This adds additional flexibility to identify file sets and individual files. NOTE: This package's API should be considered to be in an beta stage. Its main purpose is currently to support the aroma.* packages, where it is one of the main core components; if you decide to build on top of this package, please contact the author first.

Core Methods and Classes Used by 'aroma.*' Packages Part of the Aroma Framework

Core methods and classes used by higher-level 'aroma.*' packages part of the Aroma Project, e.g. 'aroma.affymetrix' and 'aroma.cn'.