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R as programming language: references?

7 messages · Federico Calboli, Feng Chen, Duncan Murdoch +3 more

Federico Calboli
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Hi All,

I am looking for references on R as a programming language (apart form
the standard R-lang.pdf and the other manuals), reference that would
cover _in_depth_ things like loops, code optimisation, debugging tools
etc... and is as up-to-date as possible. 

Can anyone suggest any book or other reference apart from the "green
book" and the V&R "S-programming"?

Cheers,

Federico Calboli
Feng Chen
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Maybe you can try this:
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/fullrefman.pdf
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Federico Calboli" <f.calboli at imperial.ac.uk>
To: "r-help" <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 5:14 PM
Subject: [R] R as programming language: references?
Federico Calboli
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On Tue, 2005-04-12 at 17:45 +0800, Feng Chen wrote:
I was thinking of something that would not limit itself to defining all
possible functions and that I do not have already on my HD...


F
Duncan Murdoch
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Feng Chen wrote:
No, that's just documentation for the standard library functions.
I think you've already got the best references.

Duncan Murdoch
A.J. Rossini
#
On Apr 12, 2005 11:54 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at math.aau.dk> wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
There is always the source.  In a sense, it IS the most in-depth and
up-to-date description of the intricacies of using the language,
though it isn't as easy to read as V&R's S Programming.

In-depth and up-to-date are tradeoffs rather than being complementary.

best,
-tony

"Commit early,commit often, and commit in a repository from which we can easily
roll-back your mistakes" (AJR, 4Jan05).

A.J. Rossini
blindglobe at gmail.com

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Jan T. Kim
    

    

      
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On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 02:01:04PM +0200, A.J. Rossini wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
I don't know what Federico Calboli has in mind, but as for myself, upon
starting with R, I've been looking for an R language reference in the
style of the Python reference (http://docs.python.org/ref/ref.html).
The specification of the grammar and the associated semantics of a
language gives me the kind of in-depth conceptual understanding that I
like to have, and I find this more difficult to accrue for R than for
other languages. For example, I'm still not certain whether I'm able to
correctly predict how many copies of an object are created during the
execution of some code, and consequently, I'm not really confident that
my code is reasonably optimal.

I'd appreciate pointers to any (more or less hidden) gems I may have
overlooked, of course.

Best regards, Jan

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Peter Dalgaard
    

    

      
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"Jan T. Kim" <jtk at cmp.uea.ac.uk> writes:

            

      
      
      
    

        
The R language definition manual is pretty much of that variety. It
has the parser specification at the end rather than at the beginning,
but otherwise it is quite similar in structure to the Python one.

The document has developed at glacial speed for several years. It
probably could do with some restructuring and rewriting (by whom?),
but you also have to be aware that some aspects of R, notably
computing on the language, creates interdependences in the
specification that are not present in other languages. I.e., the
parsing section needs to talk about parse trees and their
representation as R objects, hence it is useful to have discussed the
structure of an R object first.