Debugging C++ code in R with a single command

30 Aug 22

There are several great references for how to debug C or C++ code in R, but descriptions of how to start a debugger are often not so informative. This post describes how to start a debugging session in R with a single command.

Timeout on parallel jobs in R

14 Jan 22

Python's `multiprocessing` and `threading` libraries both have a timeout parameter for re-joining threads after they've finished. This provides an easy way to launch multi-threaded jobs while ensuing that no single thread exceeds a specified timeout. This post describes two ways to implement equivalent functionality in R.

GitHub notifications from the terminal

27 Oct 21

I work almost entirely from the terminal, and regret the few remaining tasks which still require me to venture elsewhere, such as a web browser. Until recently, one of my main reasons for constantly switching to my browser was to check my GitHub notifications. This post describes how I view my notifications within the terminal, including an option to mark them as "read" on GitHub.

The allcontributors package

10 Mar 21

An alternative implementation in R of the original 'allcontributors.org' to acknowledge all contributors in your 'README' (or elsewhere). The original is intended to help acknowledge all contributions including those beyond the contents of an actual repository, such as community or other or less-tangible organisational contributions. This version only acknowledges tangible contributions to a repository, but automates that task to a single function call, in the hope that such simplicity will spur greater usage.

The troubles with getting help files in R

29 Sep 20

A primer on ways to extract the actual content of help files. Because one day people will hopefully start text-mining these things, and show us all sorts of things we never knew about the people who make R packages. When they do, this entry will hopefully help.

Using RcppParallel to aggregate to a vector

07 Nov 19

This article was recently published in the Rcpp Gallery, and demonstrates using the RcppParallel package to aggregate to an output vector. It extends directly from previous demonstrations of single-valued aggregation, through providing necessary details to enable aggregation to a vector, or by extension, to any arbitrary form.