[R] How to organize/develop an R function

[Ernesto Jardim]

Hi

Maybe this is not an issue about R. It's probably a programming issue and I am not a developer at all. Anyway my main developing activities are in R and that's where I have difficulties.

When I develop a function or group of functions I lose eternities with the objects attributes and classes. I do a lot of object manipulation (lists to arrays, factors to numeric vectors, etc, etc) so that I can group data and apply the proper calculations/models to the proper data combination.

Then comes debugging and hell comes on earth. The objects names are unconsistent, the objects classes are not correct so methods work differently, etc.

My question is about programming good pratices in R. Does anyone know about documents (others than R manuals and MASS) ? Do you use some project management software that help on the function structure ? Do you have any ideas ? How do you (the R gurus) develop your packages ?

Thanks

EJ


-- 
Ernesto Jardim <ernesto at ipimar.pt>
Marine Biologist
IPIMAR - National Research Institute for Agriculture and Fisheries
Av. Brasilia, 1400-006
Lisboa, Portugal
Tel: +351 213 027 000
Fax: +351 213 015 948
http://ernesto.freezope.org