Topics in R

flatxml version 0.1.0 now available on CRAN The new version of my R package packagefinder now has a function fxml_toXML() which converts a dataframe into XML code. This complements the already existing fxml_toDataFrame() function that transforms an XML document into a dataframe. The package can be installed from CRAN  (just type install.packagebs("flatxml", dependencies = TRUE)   into the R console). Its source code is avaible on GitHub:  https://github.com/jsugarelli/flatxml . For detailed information on how to work with flatxml , please refer to the package's homepage https://www.zuckarelli.de/flatxml/index.html . 

In a new YouTube video (16 mins) I explain my recently published  switchcase package and the difference between its switchCase() function and R's primitive switch() function. Watch the video and visit the GitHub repo on  https://github.com/jsugarelli/switchcase to learn more .

Overview R’s built-in copy-on-modify behavior prevents the user from having two symbols always pointing to the same object. Because pointers, as they are common in other programming languages, are essentially symbols (variables) related to an object that has already another symbol attached to it, it is clear that pointers do not fit naturally into R’s language concept. However, pointers would be indredibly useful, e.g. when you work with complex subsets of dataframes. These complex filtering conditions make the code harder to read and to maintain. For this reason, it would be good to have a kind of ‘abbreviation’ or ‘shortcut’ that lets you write such filtering conditions more efficiently. Thepointr package provides functionality to create pointers to any R object easily, including pointers to subsets/selections from dataframes.  Working with  pointr Installing and loading  pointr To install the CRAN version of  pointr  from the R console, just call: ...