RE: R and APL

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 115

Did Sasha explain how he’d set up R as (presumably) a server process? I’ve got R, and it has associated folders for Tcl (for example) in its installation tree, but there’s no obvious sign of

“StatConnectorSrv.StatConnector”

Maybe this is a feature to be paid for in S+ rather than the free R!

Reply: Alexander Skomorokhov wrote:

I use:

R-(D)COM Interface (for Windows) contains a COM server used to connect a client application (e.g., Microsoft Excel) with R. An Add-In for Microsoft Excel is provided as well as Active X controls to be included in your applications.

The url is as follows: http://cran.r-project.org/contrib/extra/dcom/

Dyalog 9 ws with 4 small interface functions is attached here (see rapl.zip on the resources page of the Vector website).

      ⎕vr¨ 'rexec'   'rget'    'rinit'   'rput'

      ∇ a←{r}rexec exp
[1]    ⍝ Execute R expression and possibly returns the result
[2]    ⍝R: R expression ('char')
[3]    ⍝L: if 1, then return the result
[4]    ⍝e: mlexec 'surf(peaks)'
[5]    ⍎(0=⎕NC'r')/'r←0'
[6]    a←⍬
[7]    :If r
[8]      a←#.R.Evaluate(exp)
[9]    :Else
[10]     #.R.EvaluateNoReturn(exp)
[11]   :EndIf
      ∇

      ∇ r←rget name;rho;Re;Im;⎕ML
[1]    ⍝ version for ⎕SE
[2]    ⍝ Get R variable (matrix or vector) to APL
[3]    ⍝R-name of variable to import ('char')
[4]     ⎕ML←3
[5]     r←#.R.GetSymbol(name)
      ∇

      ∇ rinit
[1]    ⍝ version for ⎕SE
[2]    '#.R'⎕WC'OleClient' 'StatConnectorSrv.StatConnector'
[3]    #.R.Init('R')
      ∇

      ∇ {m}rput a;x1
[1]    ⍝ Version for ⎕SE
[2]    ⍝ Put APL array into R
[3]    ⍝R-name of variable to export from APL
[4]    ⍝L-name of variable to create in MatLab
[5]    ⍎(0=⎕NC'm')/'m←''x''' ⍝ Default
[6]    m←,⊂m
[7]    a←,⊂a
[8]    #.R.SetSymbol(m,a) ⍝ put var xu into R with name z
      ∇

Mike Day replies:

Thanks/spasibo to you both

I had looked at the cran.r-project site after mailing Adrian, and thought it MIGHT be R-(D)COM Interface that was needed; however, the associated web pages didn’t mention StatServer but did seem to suggest that one would need to set up a class for each R command or function or group thereof, so I was inclined to think I must need something else instead.

It’s not bundled into my R download, but as that (version 1021) is a couple of years old, it may be that the later/latest versions do include it.

I’ll download R-(D)COM Interface when I find some time and let you know if I have any problems, for possible addition/amendment to the Vector article.

Mike