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What ?
littler provides hash-bang (i.e. script starting with #!/some/path) capability for GNU R, as well as simple command-line and piping use.Why ?
GNU R, a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics, provides a wonderful system for 'programming with data' as well as interactive exploratory analysis, often involving graphs.Sometimes, however, simple scripts are desired. While R can be used in batch mode, and while so-called 'here' documents can be crafted, a long-standing need for a scripting front-end has often been expressed by the R Community.
littler (pronounced 'little R' and written 'r') aims to fill this need.
It can be used directly on the command-line just like, say, bc(1):
$ echo 'cat(pi^2,"\n")' | r 9.869604Equivalently, commands that are to be evaluated can be given on the command-line
$ r -e 'cat(pi^2, "\n")' 9.869604But unlike bc(1), GNU R has a vast number of statistical functions. For example, we can quickly compute a summary() and show a stem-and-leaf plot for file sizes in a given directory via
$ ls -l /boot | awk '!/^total/ {print $5}' | r -e 'fsizes <- as.integer(readLines());
print(summary(fsizes)); stem(fsizes)'
Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
13 512 110100 486900 768400 4735000
Loading required package: grDevices
The decimal point is 6 digit(s) to the right of the |
0 | 00000000000000000011112223
0 | 5557778899
1 | 112233
1 | 5
2 |
2 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
4 | 7
And, last but not least, this (somewhat unwieldy) expression can be stored in
a helper script:
$ cat examples/fsizes.r fsizes <- as.integer(readLines()) print(summary(fsizes)) stem(fsizes)(where calling /usr/bin/env is a trick from Python which allows one to forget whether r is installed in /usr/bin/r, /usr/local/bin/r, ~/bin/r, ...)
A few examples are provided in the source directories examples/ and tests/.
Where ?
littler can be downloaded from either the Vanderbilt BioStat Wiki or the local archive here or accessed via SVN fromsvn co http://littler.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ littlerIt can also be obtained from Debian mirrors via a simple
$ apt-get install littlerprovided apt is pointed to the testing or unstable distributions. littler is known to build and run on Linux and OS X.
What else
A few more questions are addressed in the README file which also contains a brief FAQ section.Who ?
Copyright (C) 2006, 2007, 2008 Jeffrey Horner and Dirk Eddelbuettellittler is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
Comments are welcome, as are are suggestions, bug fixes, or patches.