productivity tools in R?

[losemind]

Hi all,

Could anybody point me to some latest productivity tools in R? I am
interested in speeding up my R programming and improving my efficiency
in terms of debugging and developing R programs.

I saw my friend has a R Console window which has automatic syntax
reminder when he types in the first a few letters of R command. And
he's using R under MAC. Is that a MAC thing, or I could do the same on
my PC Windows?

More pointers about using R for efficiency in development are highly
apprecaited!

Thanks a lot!

______________________________________________
R-help@... mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Tal Galili]

Hi Michael,
Great topic - I hope to see others respond.

For me there are several big "time savers" with using R (on windows XP),
search them on google :
1) tinn-r, for syntax highlighting.
2) "Rexcel" package - for getting data from excel. (BTW, for excel, I also
recommend the ASAP utillities)
3) "debug" package - especially the mtrace command, that allows for "live"
debugging of a function
4) www.rseek.org and http://r-project.markmail.org/ , for searching R
related things in general and in the forum.


I hope for more good tips from people,

Tal








On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 7:58 PM, Michael <comtech.usa@...> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Could anybody point me to some latest productivity tools in R? I am
> interested in speeding up my R programming and improving my efficiency
> in terms of debugging and developing R programs.
>
> I saw my friend has a R Console window which has automatic syntax
> reminder when he types in the first a few letters of R command. And
> he's using R under MAC. Is that a MAC thing, or I could do the same on
> my PC Windows?
>
> More pointers about using R for efficiency in development are highly
> apprecaited!
>
> Thanks a lot!
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@... mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

--
----------------------------------------------


My contact information:
Tal Galili
Phone number: 972-50-3373767
FaceBook: Tal Galili
My Blogs:
http://www.r-statistics.com/
http://www.talgalili.com
http://www.biostatistics.co.il

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______________________________________________
R-help@... mailing list
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[mbernal72]

Emacs or X-emacs with ess (Emacs Speaks Statistics) is great on Linux and
Mac (can be the console you saw on Mac) for syntax highlight, programming
and debugging. I think there is a package to visualize the links between
functions in a package, but I don't know its name (if anybody knows it, I
will love to know it).


Best,

Miguel.
-----------------------------------------
Current address:
Ocean Modeling group,
Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences University of Rutgers
71 Dudley Road, New Brusnkwick,
New Jersey 08901, USA
e-mail: mbernal@...
phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
-----------------------------------------
Permanent address:
Instituto Español de Oceanografía
Centro Oceanográfico de Cádiz
Puerto Pesquero, Muelle de Levante, s/n, 11006 Cádiz
e-mail: miguel.bernal@...
Tel.: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

-----Mensaje original-----
De: r-help-bounces@... [mailto:r-help-bounces@...] En
nombre de Tal Galili
Enviado el: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 1:24 PM
Para: Michael
CC: r-help
Asunto: Re: [R] productivity tools in R?

Hi Michael,
Great topic - I hope to see others respond.

For me there are several big "time savers" with using R (on windows XP),
search them on google :
1) tinn-r, for syntax highlighting.
2) "Rexcel" package - for getting data from excel. (BTW, for excel, I also
recommend the ASAP utillities)
3) "debug" package - especially the mtrace command, that allows for "live"
debugging of a function
4) www.rseek.org and http://r-project.markmail.org/ , for searching R
related things in general and in the forum.


I hope for more good tips from people,

Tal








On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 7:58 PM, Michael <comtech.usa@...> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Could anybody point me to some latest productivity tools in R? I am
> interested in speeding up my R programming and improving my efficiency
> in terms of debugging and developing R programs.
>
> I saw my friend has a R Console window which has automatic syntax
> reminder when he types in the first a few letters of R command. And
> he's using R under MAC. Is that a MAC thing, or I could do the same on
> my PC Windows?
>
> More pointers about using R for efficiency in development are highly
> apprecaited!
>
> Thanks a lot!
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@... mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

--
----------------------------------------------


My contact information:
Tal Galili
Phone number: 972-50-3373767
FaceBook: Tal Galili
My Blogs:
http://www.r-statistics.com/
http://www.talgalili.com
http://www.biostatistics.co.il

        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

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and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

Checked by AVG - www.avg.com

07/01/09
05:53:00

______________________________________________
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Romain Francois-2]

If you are coming to useR! next week, then you might want to check the
session on "Workbenches":
http://www.agrocampus-ouest.fr/math/useR-2009/abstracts/schedule.html

Romain


On 07/01/2009 06:58 PM, Michael wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Could anybody point me to some latest productivity tools in R? I am
> interested in speeding up my R programming and improving my efficiency
> in terms of debugging and developing R programs.
>
> I saw my friend has a R Console window which has automatic syntax
> reminder when he types in the first a few letters of R command. And
> he's using R under MAC. Is that a MAC thing, or I could do the same on
> my PC Windows?
>
> More pointers about using R for efficiency in development are highly
> apprecaited!
>
> Thanks a lot!

--
Romain Francois
Independent R Consultant
[phone]
http://romainfrancois.blog.free.fr

______________________________________________
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[baptiste auguie-5]

2009/7/1 miguel bernal <mbernal@...>

> I think there is a package to visualize the links between
> functions in a package, but I don't know its name (if anybody knows it, I
> will love to know it).


reminds me of roxygen's callgraph (relies on graphviz), is that what you
meant?

baptiste

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and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Seeliger.Curt]

> ... I saw my friend has a R Console window which has automatic syntax
> reminder when he types in the first a few letters of R command. ...

You might be thinking of JGR (Jaguar) at
http://jgr.markushelbig.org/JGR.html . This editor also prompts you with
function argument lists, including for functions that you wrote.  It's a
very nice editor, but currently lacks the overall function of Tinn-R. Even
so, I have it on my desktop.  The RUnit package is a good start at a
standalone test harness, and I'm looking forward to additional
capabilities as it matures.

There is no IDE for R in the same way that there is for other languages --
something that supports integrated versioning, debugging and testing,
perhaps using Eclipse.  Boy howdee, I hope someone knows otherwise.

cur

--
Curt Seeliger, Data Ranger
Raytheon Information Services - Contractor to ORD
seeliger.curt@...
541/754-4638


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[Tobias Verbeke-4]

Seeliger.Curt@... wrote:

<snip>

> There is no IDE for R in the same way that there is for other languages --
> something that supports integrated versioning, debugging and testing,
> perhaps using Eclipse.  Boy howdee, I hope someone knows otherwise.

There is a feature-rich R plug-in for Eclipse at

http://www.walware.de/goto/statet

see the link below if you'd like to install the latest testing version.

https://lists.r-forge.r-project.org/pipermail/statet-user/2009-May/000147.html

HTH,
Tobias

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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 01:35:39PM -0400, miguel bernal wrote:
> Emacs or X-emacs with ess (Emacs Speaks Statistics) is great on Linux and
> Mac (can be the console you saw on Mac) for syntax highlight, programming
> and debugging.

Also see

        http://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca/en/ressources/emacs/windows

for a Windows-distribution of Emacs bundled with ESS, AucTeX (for
LaTeX), Aspell and more. Works fine on all recent flavours of Windoze.

Dirk

--
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.

______________________________________________
R-help@... mailing list
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Gene Leynes-2]

I have recently discovered the "playwith" library, which is great for  
creating complex lattice objects.

If you start with a simple lattice plot then modify it using  
playwith, you can export the code to produce the spiffed up plot.

I noticed this function at the bottom of the xyplot documentation in  
zoo:
library/zoo/html/xyplot.zoo.html

# playwith (>= 0.8-55)
library("playwith")
z3 <- zoo(cbind(a = rnorm(100), b = rnorm(100) + 1), as.Date(1:100))
playwith(xyplot(z3), time.mode = TRUE)

On Jul 1, 2009, at 11:58 AM, Michael wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Could anybody point me to some latest productivity tools in R? I am
> interested in speeding up my R programming and improving my efficiency
> in terms of debugging and developing R programs.
>
> I saw my friend has a R Console window which has automatic syntax
> reminder when he types in the first a few letters of R command. And
> he's using R under MAC. Is that a MAC thing, or I could do the same on
> my PC Windows?
>
> More pointers about using R for efficiency in development are highly
> apprecaited!
>
> Thanks a lot!
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@... mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting- 
> guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

______________________________________________
R-help@... mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Liviu Andronic]

Hello,

On 7/1/09, Michael <comtech.usa@...> wrote:
>  More pointers about using R for efficiency in development are highly
>  apprecaited!
>
This is more from the point of view of the beginner; something that I
wrote recently on r-sig-teaching:
"<skip> I will mention a recent discussion [1] on r-sig-gui that
would---I believe---also be interesting to this list. It is about
Deducer [2], a new R-GUI built on top of JGR [3], intended to be in
some respects similar to SPSS or Minitab.

Personally, as a student and a self-taught novice in R, I believe that
JGR and Rcmdr are individually (and combined) most helpful to
beginners in grasping the basics of R, of course apart from the
introductory web sites [4] and beginner-friendly documentation. There
is also playwith [5] for graphics manipulation. I'd be keen to add
Deducer on the list, when the project matures.
Departing from the "doing statistics" objective, LyX [6] is most
helpful in writing Sweave reports without the additional burden of
(properly) learning LaTeX."

Best regards,
Liviu

[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/r-sig-gui@.../msg00465.html
[2] http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/Deducer/index.html
[3] http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/JGR/index.html
[4] http://www.statmethods.net/
[5] http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/playwith/index.html
[6] http://www.lyx.org/

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[Nikos Alexandris]

On Thu, 2009-07-02 at 00:01 -0500, Gene Leynes wrote:
> playwith(xyplot(z3), time.mode = TRUE)

WoW! Looks (and is) GrEaT!

Nikos

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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Warren Young]

Michael wrote:
>
> I saw my friend has a R Console window which has automatic syntax
> reminder when he types in the first a few letters of R command. And
> he's using R under MAC. Is that a MAC thing, or I could do the same on
> my PC Windows?

Yes, the Mac GUI for R is a lot nicer than the Windows version.  I guess
it's just a matter of what interested the people who wrote each, as
there's no technical reason it has to be that way.  Maybe someone will
port some of the Mac GUI's features over to the Windows version.

______________________________________________
R-help@... mailing list
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Liviu Andronic]

On 7/2/09, Warren Young <warren@...> wrote:
> reason it has to be that way.  Maybe someone will port some of the Mac GUI's
> features over to the Windows version.
>
Or in the mean-time someone would try JGR to see whether it gets
farther than the Windows Rgui.
Liviu

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[mbernal72]

Thank you very much, the function i was looking for is the one Kevin points
out, "foodweb". I think that function, together with the whole
package "mvbutils" (which is somehow quite difficult to search for in CRAN!)
is one of the best productivity tools in R (if not the best!)


On Thursday 02 July 2009 09:27:32 Kevin W wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 12:35 PM, miguel bernal
>
> <mbernal@...>wrote:
> > and debugging. I think there is a package to visualize the links between
> > functions in a package, but I don't know its name (if anybody knows it, I
> > will love to know it).
>
> See the 'foodweb' function in the mvbutils package.
>
> Kevin

--
----
Current address:
Ocean Modeling group,
Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences
University of Rutgers
71 Dudley Road, New Brusnkwick,
New Jersey 08901, USA
email: mbernal@...
phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
---------------------------------------------
Permanent address:
Instituto Español de Oceanografía
Centro Oceanográfico de Cádiz
Puerto Pesquero, Muelle de Levante, s/n
Apdo. 2609, 11006 Cádiz, Spain
email: miguel.bernal@...
phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

______________________________________________
R-help@... mailing list
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Duncan Murdoch-2]

On 02/07/2009 5:10 AM, Warren Young wrote:

> Michael wrote:
>> I saw my friend has a R Console window which has automatic syntax
>> reminder when he types in the first a few letters of R command. And
>> he's using R under MAC. Is that a MAC thing, or I could do the same on
>> my PC Windows?
>
> Yes, the Mac GUI for R is a lot nicer than the Windows version.  I guess
> it's just a matter of what interested the people who wrote each, as
> there's no technical reason it has to be that way.  Maybe someone will
> port some of the Mac GUI's features over to the Windows version.

The Windows GUI was written before the Mac GUI, and was written using a
fairly strange toolkit, which are two reasons the Mac looks prettier.
But the Windows GUI has a few advantages over the Mac:

  You can copy from the console, prompts and all, and paste just the
commands, to re-execute a sequence of commands.

  The cursor won't move to places where input isn't allowed, so the up-
and down-arrow keys operate more consistently.

  The history() command is more sensible by default.

  Installing packages defaults to installing dependencies, and the menu
layout for doing a local install makes more sense to me.


The syntax hints in the Mac GUI would be nice, as would a number of
other features there.  (The Windows GUI does have syntax completion
using TAB, but not the hints.)  But the Windows GUI is not so bad.

Duncan Murdoch

______________________________________________
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and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Tal Galili]

Duncan,
Thank you for the "TAB for command suggestion" tip!

Tal




On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch@...> wrote:

> On 02/07/2009 5:10 AM, Warren Young wrote:
>
>> Michael wrote:
>>
>>> I saw my friend has a R Console window which has automatic syntax
>>> reminder when he types in the first a few letters of R command. And
>>> he's using R under MAC. Is that a MAC thing, or I could do the same on
>>> my PC Windows?
>>>
>>
>> Yes, the Mac GUI for R is a lot nicer than the Windows version.  I guess
>> it's just a matter of what interested the people who wrote each, as there's
>> no technical reason it has to be that way.  Maybe someone will port some of
>> the Mac GUI's features over to the Windows version.
>>
>
> The Windows GUI was written before the Mac GUI, and was written using a
> fairly strange toolkit, which are two reasons the Mac looks prettier. But
> the Windows GUI has a few advantages over the Mac:
>
>  You can copy from the console, prompts and all, and paste just the
> commands, to re-execute a sequence of commands.
>
>  The cursor won't move to places where input isn't allowed, so the up- and
> down-arrow keys operate more consistently.
>
>  The history() command is more sensible by default.
>
>  Installing packages defaults to installing dependencies, and the menu
> layout for doing a local install makes more sense to me.
>
>
> The syntax hints in the Mac GUI would be nice, as would a number of other
> features there.  (The Windows GUI does have syntax completion using TAB, but
> not the hints.)  But the Windows GUI is not so bad.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@... mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

--
----------------------------------------------


My contact information:
Tal Galili
Phone number: 972-50-3373767
FaceBook: Tal Galili
My Blogs:
http://www.r-statistics.com/
http://www.talgalili.com
http://www.biostatistics.co.il

        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

______________________________________________
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and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Kevin Wright-2]

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 12:35 PM, miguel bernal
<mbernal@...>wrote:

>
> and debugging. I think there is a package to visualize the links between
> functions in a package, but I don't know its name (if anybody knows it, I
> will love to know it).
>

See the 'foodweb' function in the mvbutils package.

Kevin

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and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Bert Gunter]

 
 -- (The Windows GUI does have syntax completion
using TAB, but not the hints.)


I never knew that! Where is this documented? -- i.e. where are all the
features of the Windows GUI documented (as there may well be others I don't
know about).

-- Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Statistics

______________________________________________
R-help@... mailing list
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Gene Leynes]

I have recently discovered the "playwith" library, which is great for
creating complex lattice objects.
If you start with a simple lattice plot then modify it using playwith, you
can export the code to produce the spiffed up plot.

I noticed this function at the bottom of the xyplot documentation in zoo:
library/zoo/html/xyplot.zoo.html

# playwith (>= 0.8-55)
library("playwith")
z3 <- zoo(cbind(a = rnorm(100), b = rnorm(100) + 1), as.Date(1:100))
playwith(xyplot(z3), time.mode = TRUE)


On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 11:58 AM, Michael <comtech.usa@...> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Could anybody point me to some latest productivity tools in R? I am
> interested in speeding up my R programming and improving my efficiency
> in terms of debugging and developing R programs.
>
> I saw my friend has a R Console window which has automatic syntax
> reminder when he types in the first a few letters of R command. And
> he's using R under MAC. Is that a MAC thing, or I could do the same on
> my PC Windows?
>
> More pointers about using R for efficiency in development are highly
> apprecaited!
>
> Thanks a lot!
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@... mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

______________________________________________
R-help@... mailing list
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

[Duncan Murdoch-2]

On 7/2/2009 10:53 AM, Bert Gunter wrote:
>  
>  -- (The Windows GUI does have syntax completion
> using TAB, but not the hints.)
>
>
> I never knew that! Where is this documented? -- i.e. where are all the
> features of the Windows GUI documented (as there may well be others I don't
> know about).


The CHANGES file tends to be the place to look for stuff like this.
 From an entry for 2.5.0:

     o There is support in both Rgui and Rterm for object/file name
        completion via the TAB key using package rcompgen.  This can
        be disabled by setting the environment variable
        R_COMPLETION=FALSE when starting R (e.g. in ~/.Renviron).
        (Words within quotes are interpreted as file names, others as
        R object names.  Use library(rcompgen); ?rc.options for more
        details, including tuning the behaviour.)

Subscribe to one of the feeds listed on
http://developer.r-project.org/RSSfeeds.html if you want to hear about
these things as they are developed (and watch typos being corrected,
etc.), or just read through the "New features in this version: Windows
specific" on the CRAN download site.

Some other help (on startup options) is available if you run Rgui
--help, and more if you use the Help|Console menu item.  But there is no
Rgui manual as such.  If you want to write one, I'd suggest putting it
on the R Wiki, so you don't take on sole responsibility for maintaining
it.

Duncan

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