[R] Foreach (doMC)

[Jay Emerson]

> P.S. Is there any particular reason why there are so seldom answers to posts regarding foreach and all these doMC/doSMP packages ?  Do so few people use these packages or does this have anything to do with the commercial origin of these packages?

Jannis,

An interesting question.  I'm a huge fan of foreach and the parallel
backends, and have used foreach in some of my packages.  It leaves the
choice of backend to the user, rather than forcing some environment.
If you like multicore, great -- the package doesn't care.  Someone
else may use doSNOW.  No problem.

To answer your question, foreach was originally written by (primarily,
at least) Steve Weston, previously of REvolution Computing.  It, along
with some of the parallel backends (perhaps all at this point, I'm out
of touch) are available open-source.  Hence, I'd argue that the
"commercial origin" is a moot point -- it doesn't matter, it will
always be available, and it's really useful.  Steve is no longer with
REvolution, however, and I can't speak for the responsiveness/interest
of current REvolution folks on this point.  Scanning R-help daily for
things relating to my own packages is something I try to do, but it
doesn't always happen.

I would like to think foreach is widely used -- it does have a growing
list of reverse depends/suggests.  And was updated as recently as last
May, I just noticed.
http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/foreach/index.html

Jay

-- 
John W. Emerson (Jay)
Associate Professor of Statistics
Department of Statistics
Yale University
http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jay