[R-pkgs] Announcing RweaveExtra

[Vincent Goulet]

Hi all,

A new package is now available on CRAN: RweaveExtra 1.0-0, which provides "Sweave Drivers with Extra Tricks Up their Sleeve".

Call me an old timer, but I always stuck to Sweave ever since it introduced me to literate programming. I just prefer the simplicity of the system. 

Now, I developed a workflow over the last few of years where one option was missing in the weave and tangle 	steps: the ability to completely ignore a code chunk. Sure, one can use 'eval = FALSE', but this is not equivalent. First, the code in the chunk is parsed. Second, the code is commented out in the tangled file. 

What if I want to write unparsable code (say for didactic purposes) or code in a foreign language altogether, and that I want this code to appear as is in the tangled script? This is where RweaveExtra comes in. Use the 'RweaveExtraLatex' driver with the chunk option 'ignore.on.weave=TRUE' and the code in the chunk will be completely ignored (not even parsed) on the weave step, but it will still be written out verbatim (uncommented) in the tangle step. (For symmetry reasons, an 'ignore.on.tangle' option also exists for the 'RtangleExtra' driver, but I never had use for it.)

See ?RweaveExtraLatex for a complete example.

I have been using the package "privately" for the past year without any issue.

I hope that the new drivers may prove useful to the community.

Vincent Goulet
École d'actuariat
Université Laval