Software

I have written various software over the years. You can get a list of most of it at GitHub. Below is a list of software I have worked on recently (and I promise to still be maintaining). I will do my best to handle issues with older software, but some of it is simply too old for me to keep track of.

pmatch

The pmatch R package implements pattern-matching, similar to Haskell and SML.

You can define data types, for example a binary tree:

tree := L(elm : numeric) | T(left : tree, right : tree)

and then match data against it, like

f <- function(x) {
    cases(x,
          L(v) -> v,
          T(left,right) -> c(f(left), f(right)))
}
x <- T(T(L(1),L(2)), T(T(L(3),L(4)),L(5)))
f(x)
#> [1] 1 2 3 4 5

foolbox

The foolbox R package is a toolbox for doing metaprogramming on R functions. It provides handles for rewriting functions using various callbacks.

For example, you can replace the function call f(y) in the body of g with the function body, 2 * x like this:

f <- function(x) 2 * x
g <- function(y) f(y)

callbacks <- rewrite_callbacks() %>%
    add_call_callback(f, function(expr, ...) quote(2 * x))

g %>% rewrite() %>% rewrite_with(callbacks)
#> function (y)
#> 2 * x

Check the homepage for examples such as partial evaluation. (The partial evaluation there is not particularly efficient; slower than just calling functions, actually. Maybe some day I can make it faster.)

tailr

The tailr R package implements the tail-recursion optimisation in R. You don’t really get much of a speedup if you combine pmatch and tailr—hand-written looping functions will always be faster—but you avoid errors when running out of stack space.

If I could speedup the pattern matching in pmatch, I believe I could make this optimisation faster; using it would be easier than hand-written looping functions, so that might make the tailr package more interesting.

gwf

The gwf program is something I wrote for handling workflows on our cluster. You can specify dependencies and such using a DSL in Python, and when you submit jobs to the cluster they will be scheduled with respect to these dependencies.

from gwf import Workflow

gwf = Workflow()

gwf.target('TargetA', inputs=[], outputs=['x.txt']) << """
echo "this is x" > x.txt
"""

gwf.target('TargetB', inputs=[], outputs=['y.txt']) << """
echo "this is y" > y.txt
"""

gwf.target('TargetC', inputs=['x.txt', 'y.txt'], outputs=['z.txt']) << """
cat x.txt y.txt > z.txt
"""

You can also get the status of them and such.

I am no longer the main developer of gwf. Dan Søndergaard has taken over, and I do not contribute much to the tool any more. Mostly because I am not running a lot of jobs on clusters. I might return to it later, when I need a cluster again.