It is not uncommon to see messy R code which is almost not human-readable like this:
# rotation of the word "Animation"
# in a loop; change the angle and color
# step by step
for (i in 1:360) {
# redraw the plot again and again
plot(1,ann=FALSE,type="n",axes=FALSE)
# rotate; use rainbow() colors
text(1,1,"Animation",srt=i,col=rainbow(360)[i],cex=7*i/360)
# pause for a while
Sys.sleep(0.01)}
Apparently it is pain reading unformatted R code, but on the other hand, it is natural for us to be lazy. I don’t care about adding spaces or indent to my raw R code — I’ll concentrate on programming first and format my code later. The R package ‘formatR‘ is intended to help us format our messy R code. Two lines of R code will show you the graphical interface of formatR:
# formatR depends on RGtk+, will be installed automatically
# please use the latest version of R (>=2.10.1)
install.packages('formatR')
library(formatR)
# or formatR()
Then you can either paste your code into the text box or click the “Open” button to open an existing R code file. Click the “Convert” button and you are done!
formatR: unformatted R code
formatR: tidy R code
There are several options in the “Preferences” panel, e.g. you can specify whether to keep comments or blank lines, or specify the width of the formatted R code.
No matter how messy your code looks like, formatR can make it tidy and structured as long as there are no syntax errors in your R code. If you prefer the command line interface, you may want to take a look at the function tidy.source() in the animation package.
Currently there are problems with the encoding of multi-byte characters, and I have not figured out how to deal with them.
Here are some (trivial) R tips in the course Stat 511. I’ll update this post till the semester is over.
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Formatting R Code
I’ve submitted an R package named
formatR to CRAN yesterday. This package should be easier than the code below, because there is a GUI to tidy your R code. Install with install.packages('formatR').
Reading code is pain, but the well-formatted code might alleviate the pain a little bit. The function tidy.source() in the animation package can help us format our R code automatically. By default it will read your code in the clipboard, parse it and return the well-formatted code. You have options to keep or remove the comments/blank lines and set the width of the code, etc. Spaces and indent will be added automatically. This can save us time typing spaces and paying attention to indent.
## install.packages('animation') if it is not installed yet
library(animation)
## copy some R code somewhere and type:
tidy.source()
## or specify the path of your code file
tidy.source(file.path(system.file(package = "graphics"), "demo", "image.R"))
## can also use a URL
tidy.source('http://www.public.iastate.edu/~dnett/S511/twofactor.R')
## remove blank lines
tidy.source('http://www.public.iastate.edu/~dnett/S511/twofactor.R',
keep.blank.line = FALSE)
## remove comments
tidy.source('http://www.public.iastate.edu/~dnett/S511/twofactor.R',
keep.comment = FALSE)
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