[R] Good pointers for understanding the R language implementation

David Winsemius dwinsemius at comcast.net
Wed Apr 6 03:33:56 CEST 2016


> On Apr 5, 2016, at 8:26 AM, Francisco Banha <francisco.mcfb at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear All,
> 
> I'm currently working on a project with the purpose of remotely executing R code, which requires me to have to work with the code of R itself. I've searched the Internet for good information that will help me understand how R is implemented but what I've got so far isn't detailed enough.

This is too vague for commentary. If you claim that you have digested  all of "The R Language Definition", "R Internals", and "R Installation and Administration", (all of which are shipped with the standard R distro) then I suggest you are either the wisest man on Earth, or you should be evaluated by a psychiatrist who is also a skilled R programmer. (Are there any such?) 

> I've looked specifically at CRAN's manuals on the official website but they only address this issue briefly. I've also looked at other contents online but so far nothing has turned up that has the level of detail that I need to properly understand the inner workings of R.
> For example, I need to understand how exactly an expression is parsed and evaluated, because I will need to intervene in the process to decide whether to execute it remotely or not.
> Does anyone know of good pointers that would help me understand this?

If you run candidate text through the `parse`-function you can determine whether it is syntactically evaluable. But then what? Are you trying to filter expressions on the basis of some sort of "safety index"?


> Thanks for any help!
> 
> Best regards,
> Francisco
> 		 	   		  
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> 
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David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA



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