Rcpp 0.7.4
Published on Thinking inside the box : Rcpp 0.7.4 · Retrieved on January 31, 2010
Yesterday, and about nine days after release 0.7.3 of Rcpp (a set of R / C++ interface classes), Romain and I released
version 0.7.4. It has been uploaded to CRAN and Debian, and mirrors should already have new
versions. As before, my local page is
also available for downloads and some more details.The release once again combines a number of necessary fixes with numerous new features:
- Building on OS X did not support multi-arch, and we are grateful for Simon who once again came to the rescue. Things should be fine now. The big take-away is that under no circumstances, include either a file configure or src/Makefile if you want multi-arch builds for free. As Rcpp is effectively a library to be used by other packages, this mattered.
- We added a file NEWS from which I include the relevant section below.
- Much more code re-organisation and enhancement making passage of various C++ types even easier -- see the NEWS entry below.
- More unit tests, now including ones for the 'old Rcpp API'.
Lastly, we had a remaining Windows build issue. Also, Brian Ripley and Uwe Ligges kindly sent us a small patch supporting the new Windows 64-bit builds using the new MinGW 64-bit compiler for Windows -- so release 0.7.5 may follow in due course.
The NEWS file entry for release 0.7.4 is as follows:
0.7.4 2010-01-30
o matrix matrix-like indexing using operator() for all vector
types : IntegerVector, NumericVector, RawVector, CharacterVector
LogicalVector, GenericVector and ExpressionVector.
o new class Rcpp::Dimension to support creation of vectors with
dimensions. All vector classes gain a constructor taking a
Dimension reference.
o an intermediate template class "SimpleVector" has been added. All
simple vector classes are now generated from the SimpleVector
template : IntegerVector, NumericVector, RawVector, CharacterVector
LogicalVector.
o an intermediate template class "SEXP_Vector" has been added to
generate GenericVector and ExpressionVector.
o the clone template function was introduced to explicitely
clone an RObject by duplicating the SEXP it encapsulates.
o even smarter wrap programming using traits and template
meta-programming using a private header to be include only
RcppCommon.h
o the as template is now smarter. The template now attempts to
build an object of the requested template parameter T by using the
constructor for the type taking a SEXP. This allows third party code
to create a class Foo with a constructor Foo(SEXP) to have
as for free.
o wrap becomes a template. For an object of type T, wrap uses
implicit conversion to SEXP to first convert the object to a SEXP
and then uses the wrap(SEXP) function. This allows third party
code creating a class Bar with an operator SEXP() to have
wrap for free.
o all specializations of wrap : wrap, wrap< vector >
use coercion to deal with missing values (NA) appropriately.
o configure has been withdrawn. C++0x features can now be activated
by setting the RCPP_CXX0X environment variable to "yes".
o new template r_cast to facilitate conversion of one SEXP
type to another. This is mostly intended for internal use and
is used on all vector classes
o Environment now takes advantage of the augmented smartness
of as and wrap templates. If as makes sense, one can
directly extract a Foo from the environment. If wrap makes
sense then one can insert a Bar directly into the environment.
Foo foo = env["x"] ; /* as is used */
Bar bar ;
env["y"] = bar ; /* wrap is used */
o Environment::assign becomes a template and also uses wrap to
create a suitable SEXP
o Many more unit tests for the new features; also added unit tests
for older API
As always, even fuller details are in the ChangeLog on the Rcpp page which also leads to the downloads, the browseable doxygen docs and zip files of doxygen output for the standard formats. Questions, comments etc should go to the rcpp-devel mailing list off the R-Forge page
If you wish to comment or finish reading the full article, please visit: "Rcpp 0.7.4"
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