[R] R as programming language: references?

[Huntsinger, Reid]

As far as predicting the number of copies which R will create during the
execution of some code, that's almost completely implementation dependent;
no language specification (syntax or semantics) would help. You can
investigate this empirically (try several approaches and look at memory
usage) and/or look at the relevant source (packages, the interface code for
.C/.Call/.Fortran etc, the array manipulation routines,...). I should add
that this code is surprisingly clear and modular, so it's much easier to
read than you might think.

Reid Huntsinger


-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Jan T. Kim
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 12:54 PM
To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] R as programming language: references?


On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 02:01:04PM +0200, A.J. Rossini wrote:
> On Apr 12, 2005 11:54 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at math.aau.dk> wrote:
> 
> > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Federico Calboli"
> > > <f.calboli at imperial.ac.uk>
> > > To: "r-help" <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
> > > Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 5:14 PM
> > > Subject: [R] R as programming language: references?
> > >
> > >
> > >> Hi All,
> > >>
> > >> I am looking for references on R as a programming language (apart
form
> > >> the standard R-lang.pdf and the other manuals), reference that would
> > >> cover _in_depth_ things like loops, code optimisation, debugging
tools
> > >> etc... and is as up-to-date as possible.
> > >>
> > >> Can anyone suggest any book or other reference apart from the "green
> > >> book" and the V&R "S-programming"?
> > 
> > I think you've already got the best references.
> 
> There is always the source.  In a sense, it IS the most in-depth and
> up-to-date description of the intricacies of using the language,
> though it isn't as easy to read as V&R's S Programming.
> 
> In-depth and up-to-date are tradeoffs rather than being complementary.

I don't know what Federico Calboli has in mind, but as for myself, upon
starting with R, I've been looking for an R language reference in the
style of the Python reference (http://docs.python.org/ref/ref.html).
The specification of the grammar and the associated semantics of a
language gives me the kind of in-depth conceptual understanding that I
like to have, and I find this more difficult to accrue for R than for
other languages. For example, I'm still not certain whether I'm able to
correctly predict how many copies of an object are created during the
execution of some code, and consequently, I'm not really confident that
my code is reasonably optimal.

I'd appreciate pointers to any (more or less hidden) gems I may have
overlooked, of course.

Best regards, Jan
-- 
 +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+
 |    *NEW*    email: jtk at cmp.uea.ac.uk                               |
 |    *NEW*    WWW:   http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk             |
 *-----=<  hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans  >=-----*

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