[R] New project: littler for GNU R

[Gabor Grothendieck]

The real problem is that one wants to pipe the data in, not the
R source.  The idea is that one successively transforms the
data in successive elements of the pipeline.

For example one might want to write cut, grep, etc. in R rather than
in C.

This has been on my year-end wishlist for some time.

On 9/26/06, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> On 9/26/2006 1:04 PM, Jeffrey Horner wrote:
> > What ?
> > ======
> >
> >    littler - Provides hash-bang (#!) capability for R (www.r-project.org)
> >
> >
> > Why ?
> > =====
> >
> >    GNU R, a language and environment for statistical computing and
> >    graphics, provides a wonderful system for 'programming with data'
> >    as well as interactive exploratory analysis, often involving graphs.
> >
> >    Sometimes, however, simple scripts are desired. While GNU R can
> >    be used in batch mode, and while so-called 'here' documents can be
> >    crafted, a long-standing need for a scripting front-end has often
> >    been expressed by the R Community.
> >
> >    littler (pronounced 'little R' and written 'r') aims to fill
> >    this need.
> >
> >    It can be used directly on the command-line just like, say, bc(1):
> >
> >
> >          $ echo 'cat(pi^2,"\n")' | r
> >          9.869604
>
> Is there a technical reason that this couldn't work by modifying the
> script that invokes R?  That would avoid the r/R clash on MacOSX and
> Windows.  In Windows R is R.exe, not a script, so some adjustment would
> be needed there, but that shouldn't be difficult.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
> >
> >    Equivalently, commands that are to be evaluated can be given on
> >    the command-line
> >
> >          $ r -e 'cat(pi^2, "\n")'
> >          9.869604
> >
> >    But unlike bc(1), GNU R has a vast number of statistical
> >    functions. For example, we can quickly compute a summary() and show
> >    a stem-and-leaf plot for file sizes in a given directory via
> >
> >          $ ls -l /boot | awk '!/^total/ {print $5}' | \
> >               r -e 'fsizes <- as.integer(readLines());
> >                  print(summary(fsizes)); stem(fsizes)'
> >             Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
> >               13     512  110100  486900  768400 4735000
> >          Loading required package: grDevices
> >
> >            The decimal point is 6 digit(s) to the right of the |
> >
> >            0 | 00000000000000000011112223
> >            0 | 5557778899
> >            1 | 112233
> >            1 | 5
> >            2 |
> >            2 |
> >            3 |
> >            3 |
> >            4 |
> >            4 | 7
> >
> >
> >    And, last but not least, this (somewhat unwieldy) expression can
> >    be stored in a helper script:
> >
> >          $ cat examples/fsizes.r
> >          #!/usr/bin/env r
> >
> >          fsizes <- as.integer(readLines())
> >          print(summary(fsizes))
> >          stem(fsizes)
> >
> >    (where calling /usr/bin/env is a trick from Python which allows one
> >    to forget whether r is installed in /usr/bin/r, /usr/local/bin/r,
> >    ~/bin/r, ...)
> >
> >    A few examples are provided in the source directories examples/
> >    and tests/.
> >
> > Where ?
> > =======
> >
> >    littler can either be downloaded from
> >
> >        http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/LittleR
> >
> >    accessed by anonymous SVN:
> >
> >        $ svn co http://littler.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ littler
> >
> >    or (soon !) be gotten from Debian mirrors via
> >
> >        $ agt-get install littler
> >
> >    littler is known to build and run on Linux and OS X.
> >
> >
> > Who ?
> > =====
> >
> >    Copyright (C) 2006 Jeffrey Horner and Dirk Eddelbuettel
> >
> >    littler is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
> >    under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
> >    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
> >    (at your option) any later version.
> >
> >    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
> >    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
> >    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
> >    General Public License for more details.
> >
> >    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
> >    License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
> >    Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston,
> >    MA  02111-1307  USA
> >
> >    Comments are welcome, as are are suggestions, bug fixes, or patches.
> >
> >
> >      - Jeffrey Horner <jeff.horner at vanderbilt.edu>
> >      - Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org>
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>