Code analysis and parallelizing vector operations in R

This paper presents some current work and preliminary thoughts on two seemingly unrelated areas. The first is the development of code analysis tools to help identify possible errors in R code. Current versions of these tools have been useful in finding bugs in R’s code as well as code in packages submitted to CRAN. The second area, where work is just beginning, is the development of mechanisms to allow R’s internal vectorized operations, as well as vectorized operations defined in packages, to take advantage of multiple processors. These two areas are related through their connections to ongoing efforts to develop a byte code compiler for R.