My two favorite scientific programming languages are Python and R, each for their own specific strengths. I stick with R for most of my serious stats stuff, but for everyday processing, analysis, and GUI building, Python is my modus operandi. Lately however, I’ve been doing more and more things in Python… even the stats stuff. When doing statistical analysis in Python, I usually use the excellent rpy2 library to communicate between Python and R. As a result, I have put together quite a few little code snippets to work with R commands in Python. Recently, I decided to put a bunch of these snippets together to create what I’ve called fakeR. Basically it is a simple Python script that emulates a very basic (toy) R console. The fakeR console supports multi-line commands and pretty much all regular R commands, but has no history or any nice features like that. The cool and/or handy thing about it is that it separates the input/output from the actual processing via the very cool multiprocessing Python package. Using this package, it is possible to separate the input/output and processing into two separate processes running in parallel, with communication back and forth done via a duplex (two-way) pipe. I’ve uploaded the script for anyone interested in having a play with it. If anyone has any ideas on how to (safely) cancel a currently running R command on the processing side, I’d be very interested to hear them.
Carson
