[R] Advice for calling a C function

[Tyler Smith]

Hi,

I'm having some trouble with a bit of combined C & R code. I'm trying to 
write a C function to handle the for loops in a function I'm working on 
to calculate a similarity matrix. Jari Oksanen has kindly added the 
necessary changes to the vegan package so that I can use the vegdist 
function, so this isn't absolutely necessary. However, I'm stubborn and 
want to know why Jari's code works and mine doesn't! Other than, of 
course, the obvious - one of us knows what their doing and the other 
doesn't. I would appreciate any help. What I've done is:

pass a matrix x to my C function, as a double:

.C("gowsim", as.double(mat), as.integer(nrow(mat)), as.integer(ncol(mat)))

 Then I try and reconstruct the matrix, in the form of a C array:

#include <R.h>
#include <Rmath.h>
#include <math.h>

void gowsim ( double *mat, int *OBJ, int *MATDESC)
 {
    double x [*MATDESC][*OBJ];
    int i, j, nrow, ncol;
    nrow = *OBJ;
    ncol = *MATDESC;
   
    /* Rebuild Matrix */
    for (j=0; j < ncol; j++) {
        for (i=0; i < nrow; i++) {
            x[i][j] = *mat;
            Rprintf("row %d col %d value %f\n", i, j, x[i][j]);
            mat++;
        }
    }
    for (i=0; i< nrow; i++) {
    Rprintf("%f %f %f %f\n", x[i][0], x[i][1], x[i][2], x[i][3]);
    }
}

The Rprintf statements display what's going on at each step. It looks 
for all the world as if the assignments are working properly, but when I 
try and print the matrix I get very strange results. If mat is 3x3 or 
4x4 everything seems ok. But if mat is not symetrical the resulting x 
matrix is very strange. In the case of a 5x4 mat only the first column 
works out, and for 3x4 mat the second and third positions in the first 
column are replaced by the first and second positions of the last 
column. I'm guessing that I've messed up something in my use of 
pointers, or perhaps the for loop, but I can't for the life of me figure 
out what!! Once I sort this out I'll be calculating the differences 
between rows in the x array en route to producing a similarity matrix. I 
looked at the vegdist code, which is fancier than this, and  manages to 
avoid rebuilding the matrix entirely, but it's a bit beyond me.

I'm using WindowsXP, R 2.1.0  (2005-04-18), and the MinGW compiler.

Thanks for your continued patience,

Tyler

-- 
Tyler Smith

PhD Candidate
Department of Plant Science
McGill University
21,111 Lakeshore Road
Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec
H9X 3V9
CANADA

Tel: 514 398-7851 ext. 8726
Fax: 514 398-7897

tyler.smith at mail.mcgill.ca