RSPerl saves the day!

Yes, this is a Perl module. But it is also an

R

package. This is because it is a bi-directional interface, it allows

R

to call Perl and that very Perl code to call back to

R

. It allows us to pass

R

functions to Perl and use them as callable objects. (Passing Perl subroutines or methods to

R

is a little less elegant, but doable.)

R

doesn't handle yuckily or irregularly formed stuff as well as perl, but I’m less adept at manipulating matrices (one of the strengths of

R

) in perl (grabbing some rows, hacking off columns, smacking the rest of the columns onto the end of a working dataset).