[R] R package-building

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 9 Jan 2002, Tim Hoar wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I am building a package to read in a pretty common atmospheric data format
> and create a SKEW-T, log p diagram (also very common for the atmospheric
> community).
>
> The problem is this: How should one address the (ASCII) data files so that
> the examples find them? I have read through the "Writing R Extensions"
> document and still have a problem.
>
> There seems to be some sort of disconnect between getting the examples
> to run when you "R CMD check <package>" and when you have them installed
> and ready for general consumption.
>
> Before the package is installed (i.e. during the "R CMD check") the
> unix current working directory must be just below the package directory.
>
> The package is going to be called RadioSonde (after the instrument that
> collects the data), and I am building the package under unix.
>
>    $cwd/RadioSonde/R/*.R     # including getsonde.R
>    $cwd/RadioSonde/man/*.Rd
>    $cwd/RadioSonde/data/ExampleSonde.txt
>
> $cwd <prompt> R CMD check RadioSonde
> [works fine, I can build]
>
> In order to get the examples to "check" correctly they must be:
>
> profile1 <- getsonde("RadioSonde/data/ExampleSonde.txt")
>
> but then this is inappropriate for the installed version, which
> really should key off the .path.package()  ...
>
> > system("pwd")
> /home/thoar
> > .path.package("RadioSonde")
> [1] "/contrib/R-1.3.0/lib/R/library/RadioSonde"
> > ydata <- getsonde("RadioSonde/data/ExampleSonde.txt")
> Error in file(file, "r") : cannot open file `RadioSonde/data/ExampleSonde.txt'


Use data().  Have a file ExampleSonde.R in RadioSonde/data that does
whatever is necessary to read ExampleSonde.txt.  Then
data(ExampleSonde) will work, from anywhere.

I think ExampleSonde.R could just contain

ExampleSonde <- getsonde("ExampleSonde.txt")

BTW, assuming ExampleSonde.txt is really data, I suggect you don't give it
a .txt extension.  data() allows that for rectangular arrays of data.

See ?data for more details.

-- 
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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