Documentation

Evaluating R expressions in H

At the H interactive prompt, the most convenient way to interact with R is through quasiquotation. r is a quasiquoter that constructs an R expression, ships it off to R and has the expression evaluated by R, yielding a value.

H> [r| 1 |]
0x00007f355520ab38

We do not normally manipulate R values directly, instead leaving them alone for R to manage. In Haskell, we manipulate handles to R values, rather than the values themselves directly. Handles have types of the form SEXP s a, which is actually a type synonym for a pointer type, so values of type SEXP s a are not terribly interesting in their own right: they are just memory addresses, as seen above. However, one can use H.print to ask R to show us the value pointed to by a handle:

H> H.printQuote [r| 1 + 1 |]
[1] 2
H> H.printQuote [r| x <- 1; x + 2 |]
[1] 3
H> H.printQuote [r| x |]
[1] 1

In the following, we will loosely identify handles to R values and R values, since the distinction between the two is seldom relevant.

The r quasiquoter hides much of the heavy lifting of building expressions ourselves, allowing us to conveniently use R syntax to denote R expressions. The next sections document some advanced uses of quasiquotes. But for now, note that r is not the only quasiquoter and one is free to implement new quasiquoters if needed. One such alternative quasiquoter is rexp, also defined in H, which acts in much the same way as r, except that it returns R expressions unevaluated:

H> H.printQuote [rexp| 1 + 1 |]
expression(1+1)

Because quasiquoters ask R itself to parse expressions, at quasiquote expansion time, H itself need not implement its own R parser. This means that the entirety of R’s syntax is supported, and that it is possible to take advantage of any future additions to the R syntax for free in H, without any extra effort.

In H, graphical facilities are readily available. For example:

H> [r| plot(cars) |]

NOTE: if you resize the graphics window, you’ll notice that this window might not be repainted. In fact, the window might not even close properly. The reason for this is because since H is a thin wrapper around GHCi, and there is currently no way to mesh GHCi’s read-eval-print loop with R’s event loop, events must be processed manually, by calling H.refresh at the prompt. IHaskell does not have this limitation.