[Rd] asking for suggestions: interface for a C++ class

[Yurii Aulchenko]

Dear All,

I would like to have an advice for designing an R library, and thought  
that R-devel may be the best place to ask given so many people who are  
highly expert in R are around.

We are at an early stage of designing an R library, which is  
effectively an interface to a C++ library providing fast access to  
large matrices stored on HDD as binary files. The core of the C++  
library is relatively sophisticated class, which we try to "mirror"  
using an S4 class in R. Basically when a new object of that class is  
initiated, the C++ constructor is called and essential elements of the  
new object are reflected as slots of the R object.

Now as you can imagine the problem is that if the R object is removed  
using say "rm" command, and not our specifically designed one, the C++  
object still hangs around in RAM until R session is terminated. This  
is not nice, and also may be a problem, as the C++ object may allocate  
large part of RAM. We can of cause replace generic "rm" and "delete"  
functions, but this is definitely not a nice solution.

Sounds like rather common problem people may face, but unfortunately I  
was not able to find a solution.

I will greatly appreciate any suggestions.

many thanks in advance,
Yurii