[R] BMP to matrix

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On Wed, 28 Jun 2000, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 19:50:36 +0100 (BST), Prof Brian D Ripley
> <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote in message
> <Pine.GSO.4.05.10006281948310.23872-100000 at auk.stats>:
> 
> >On Wed, 28 Jun 2000, Manuel Castejon Limas wrote:
> >> is there any R function that loads a bmp file, or any other format, and converts its grid of pixels into a matrix or data frame?
> >
> >Almost certainly not (they are binary files) ...
> 
> Is there a reason why R doesn't read binary files, or is it just that
> nobody has volunteered to write functions for that yet?

What do you read them into?  Svr4 has a `raw' data type, but R has no such
type, and S-PLUS 5.x has almost no support for it.  Without, say, 8-bit,
16-bit and 32-bit unsigned data types and some useful operators on them, it
is hard to do much usefully at the R level.  There has not been the need
when usually one can borrow and interface tested C code.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
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 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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