RRuby

RRuby_0.1-0.tar.gz (18 July 2013)

This package is an initial and currently partially complete bi-directional interface between the R and Ruby programming languages. At present, this allows R users to access Ruby functionality. We plan to merge this with RSRuby (see below) to provide the other side of the bi-directionality.

The motivation for this package was to illustrate how to construct an inter-system interface between R and another language.

Software Download

RRuby_0.1-0.tar.gz

Alternative Approaches

RSRuby by Alex Gutteridge. This is essentially a uni-directional interface allowing Ruby users to call R functions. The design is in the spirit of our inter-system interface and we plan on integrating the code from this package with the code from RSRuby to complete the bi-directional nature of the interface. RinRuby by David Dahl. This uses sockets to connect separate R and Ruby processes. This is a useful approach but quite different. It potentially allows for distributed communication across machines. Unfortunately it does not deal with security, life-span and cleanup issues. It also requires the Ruby programmer to write R commands/syntax. It does not attempt to provide the kind of interface that we pursue which tries to transparently merge the languages and symbols so that programmers in each language treat the functionality provided by the other as if it were local/native: This is essentially a uni-directional interface allowing Ruby users to call R functions. The design is in the spirit of our inter-system interface and we plan on integrating the code from this package with the code from RSRuby to complete the bi-directional nature of the interface.
RinRuby by David Dahl. This uses sockets to connect separate R and Ruby processes. This is a useful approach but quite different. It potentially allows for distributed communication across machines. Unfortunately it does not deal with security, life-span and cleanup issues. It also requires the Ruby programmer to write R commands/syntax. It does not attempt to provide the kind of interface that we pursue which tries to transparently merge the languages and symbols so that programmers in each language treat the functionality provided by the other as if it were local/native: This uses sockets to connect separate R and Ruby processes. This is a useful approach but quite different. It potentially allows for distributed communication across machines. Unfortunately it does not deal with security, life-span and cleanup issues. It also requires the Ruby programmer to write R commands/syntax. It does not attempt to provide the kind of interface that we pursue which tries to transparently merge the languages and symbols so that programmers in each language treat the functionality provided by the other as if it were local/native

Duncan Temple Lang <duncan@wald.ucdavis.edu>

Last modified: Sun Jun 28 17:07:25 PDT 2009