[R] New project: littler for GNU R

[Duncan Murdoch]

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>
> 
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