[R] Using n+1 instances of R to utilise n processors on one machine - something like R with tabbed browsing?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sun, 16 Nov 2008, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> This is what e.g. package snow does: it will also collect the results for 
> you.  See also package pvapply.

Typo: 'papply'

>
> On Sat, 15 Nov 2008, clair.crossupton at googlemail.com wrote:
>
>> Dear R-help,
>> 
>> Please forgive me if any of the following sounds naieve/confused, i've
>> just got back from a mini-pub-crawl, slightly tipsy, and am feeling
>> brave to ask a possibly silly question... also, not to shiny on the
>> technical side of things.
>> 
>> Problem - I need to text mine a collection of 10,000 plain text
>> documents, all of which are sitting in a single folder. i don't have
>> any money to buy a database package, and even if i did i have no idea
>> how that would speed things up if i want to do all the processing in
>> R
>> 
>> Assumption - It is my understanding that R can only use one processor
>> on a machine when handeling calculations. If you wanted to use 4
>> processors, than you would have to open up 4 seperate instances of R
>> and share the work between them eg. give each instance of R 25% of the
>> documents you want processed
>> 
>> Question - It is possible to have one instance of R to divide the
>> workload, and then that instance opens up 4 other instances of R to do
>> the processing?
>> 
>> Or, is sometihng akin to tabbed browsing, where you have one main
>> window and several tabs, each corresponding to a different instance of
>> R?
>> 
>> appologies if none of hte above made sense  :o)
>> 
>> Clair xx
>> 
>> 
>> O/S: Windows Vista
>> R 2.8.0
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org 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.
>> 
>
> -- 
> 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 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org 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.
>

-- 
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 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595