squarebrackets: Subset Methods as Alternatives to the Square Brackets Operators for Programming
What is the ‘squarebrackets’ R package?
‘squarebrackets’ is a light-weight extension of the base ‘R’ [, [<-, [[, and [[<- operators.
Why use ‘squarebrackets’?
Provides subset methods (supporting both atomic and recursive S3 classes) that may be more convenient alternatives to the [ and [<- operators, whilst maintaining similar performance.
Some nice properties of these methods include, but are not limited to, the following:
1) The [ and [<- operators use different rule-sets for different data.frame-like types (data.frames, data.tables, tibbles, tidytables, etc.);
The ‘squarebrackets’ methods use the same rule-sets for the different data.frame-like types.
2) Performing dimensional subset operations on an array using [ and [<-, requires a-priori knowledge on the number of dimensions the array has;
The ‘squarebrackets’ methods work on any arbitrary dimensions without requiring such prior knowledge.
3) Unlike the [ and [<- operators, the ‘squarebrackets’ methods will operate on duplicate names (not just the first match), use consistent syntax for inverting indices, and support the use of keywords through formulas.
4) The [<- operator only supports copy-on-modify semantics for most classes;
The ‘squarebrackets’ methods provide explicit pass-by-reference and pass-by-value semantics, and do so safely.
5) ‘squarebrackets’ supports index-less sub-set operations for long vectors, which is more memory efficient than sub-set operations using the [ and [<- operators.
Installing & Loading
One can install ‘squarebrackets’ from GitHub like so:
remotes::install_github("https://github.com/tony-aw/squarebrackets")Special care has been taken to make sure the function names are clear, and that the function names are unlikely to conflict with core R, the recommended R packages, the rstudioapi package, or major packages from the fastverse. So one can attach the package - thus exposing its functions to the namespace - using: