[Rd] Packages in R & Java

[Marsland, John]

Yes, lots of packages do use C/Fortran code ... it would be great if there
were more packages that are "pure R" especially since the advent of S4
classes and namespaces.

Is it worth suggesting that we create a designation "pure R" for packages
that have no external source code and encourage more of these? Indeed, now
the number of packages is so big could they be classified to aid potential
users?

Going back to the original question, it strikes me that C/Fortran code is
most often used to interface to other code - there would be a better way of
doing this in a Java environment - or to speed up existing R code - where
loops are usually the cause of the speed problem and the introduction Java
bytecode would presumably be helpful anyway. Surely there could be some sort
of process to generate automated jni bindings?

I don't think a Java implementation of the R parser is as bigger task as it
seems ... much of the work to get an interpreted scripting language working
could be taken from the Jython project?

Regards,

John

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Simon Urbanek [mailto:Simon.Urbanek at math.uni-augsburg.de]
> Sent: 26 February 2004 15:39
> To: Marsland, John
> Cc: r-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [Rd] Script editor for Windows GUI
> 
> On Feb 26, 2004, at 11:58 AM, Marsland, John wrote:
> > On a slightly different tack, I have recently taken a look at Jython -
an
> > implementation of Python in Java that produces byte code that runs on
the
> > JVM. Combined with this there is a project called xoltar which aims to
bring
> > functional programming to Python. This got me thinking that a R parser
could
> > be written in Java for a core set of functionality allowing code and
> > packages written in "pure-R" to be compiled as byte code and run on 
> > the JVM. Then one could call  the SJava package from Java to execute 
> > anything unusual in R proper.... any thoughts?
> 
> Good question - due to the amount of packages that use C/Fortran code I 
> had the impression that this sounds just too crazy. But I'm really keen 
> on getting some feedback on this, because technically, one of the CS 
> students here would enjoy doing something like that ...


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