I have released a new version of my “pretty quick” R interpreter, pqR-2016-10-05. One major change with this version is that pqR, which was based on R-2.15.0, is now compatible with R-2.15.1.  This allows for an increased number of packages in the pqR repository.

This release also has some significant speed improvements, a new form of the “for” statement, for conveniently iterating across columns or down rows of a matrix, and a new, less error-prone way for C functions to “protect” objects from garbage collection. There are also a few bug fixes (including fixes for some bugs that are also in the current R core release).

You can read more in the NEWS file, and get it from pqR-project.org.

Currently, pqR is distributed in source form only, and so you need to be comfortable compiling it yourself. It has been tested on Linux/Unix systems (with Intel/AMD, ARM, PowerPC, and SPARC processors), on Mac OS X (including macOS Sierra), and on Microsoft Windows (XP, 7, 8, 10) systems.

I plan to soon put up posts with more details on some of the features of this and the previous pqR release, as well as a post describing some of my future plans for pqR.