python-like dictionary for R

Thanks gang,
I'll work with named vectors and concatenate as needed.

This might be ok for small problems, but concatenation is an inefficient
R pattern -- the objects being concatenated are copied in full, so
becomes longer, and the concatenation slower, with each new key. With

a <- integer(); t0 <- Sys.time()
for (i in seq_len(1e6)) {
    a <- c(a, i)
    if (0 == i %% 10000)
        print(i / as.numeric(Sys.time() - t0))
}

we have, in 'appends per second'

[1] 3236.76
[1] 2425.111
[1] 1757.52
[1] 1331.846

We don't really have a dictionary here, either, as the 'key' values are
not stored. Phil's suggest suffers from the same type of issue, where
the addition of new keys implies growing (reallocating) the vector.

a <- integer(); t0 <- Sys.time()
for (i in seq_len(1e6)) {
    key <- as.character(i)
    a[[key]] <- i
    if (0 == i %% 10000)
        print(i / as.numeric(Sys.time() - t0))
}
[1] 12659.18
[1] 9516.288
[1] 6821.47
[1] 5907.782


Better to use an environment (and live with reference semantics)

e <- new.env(parent=emptyenv()); t0 <- Sys.time()
for (i in seq_len(1e6)) {
    key <- as.character(i)
    e[[key]] <- i
    if (0 == i %% 10000)
        print(i / as.numeric(Sys.time() - t0))
}

with

[1] 20916.56
[1] 21421.85
[1] 21762.04
[1] 21207.69
[1] 21239.19

The usual alternative to the concatenation pattern is
'pre-allocate-and-fill'

x <- integer(1e6); t0 <- Sys.time()
for (i in seq_len(1e6)) {
    ???
}

but this doesn't work with key/value pairs because there is no sense (or
is there?) in which the keys can be 'pre-allocated'.

Creating the dictionary in one go is very efficient

system.time(d <-

+     structure(seq_len(1e6), .Names=as.character(seq_len(1e6))))
   user  system elapsed
  0.417   0.002   0.419

Martin

Paul

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 7:39 AM, Seth Falcon <seth at userprimary.net
<mailto:seth at userprimary.net>> wrote:

    On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 7:05 PM, Martin Morgan <mtmorgan at fhcrc.org
    <mailto:mtmorgan at fhcrc.org>> wrote:

    > On 12/22/2010 05:49 PM, Paul Rigor wrote:

    >> Hi,
    >>
    >> I was wondering if anyone has played around this this package called
    >> "rdict"? It attempts to implement a hash table in R using skip

    lists. Just

    >> came across it while trying to look for simpler text manipulation

    methods:

    >>
    >>

    http://userprimary.net/posts/2010/05/29/rdict-skip-list-hash-table-for-R/

    >
    > kind of an odd question, so kind of an odd answer.
    >
    > I'd say this was an implementation of skip lists in C with an R
    > interface.

    I had to play around with the rdict package in order to write it, but
    haven't used it much since :-P
    Be sure to look at R's native environment objects which provide a hash
    table structure and are suitable for many uses.

    + seth

    --
    Seth Falcon | @sfalcon | http://userprimary.net/

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