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The first thing that the translator does is go through the program and convert the basic syntax from Matlab to R. This includes the following:
This is done with simple ‘gsub’ calls and examples are shown below.
| matCode | rCode |
|---|---|
|
thing = 5 * 3;
thing2 = (thing ~= 14);
|
thing <- 5 * 3
thing2 <- (thing != 14)
|
Next it goes through all the different flow control blocks and converts them to the R equivalent. The converted blocks are as follows.
Switch statements will be included in a future version as R does not really have a true switch / case type block. The ‘switch’ function is helpful in a lot of situations but the usage is different from how other languages do switch blocks. Below are some examples of how its used for the other blocks.
| matCode | rCode |
|---|---|
|
if argLen == 1
doThing = 9999;
else
doThing = 1;
end
|
if (argLen == 1){
doThing <- 9999
} else {
doThing <- 1
}
|
In matlab there is a distinction between script files and function files. If a function file is supplied (first word is “function”) than the function definitions will be changed with some of syntax.
The returned objects are gathered and put in a ‘return’ statement at the end of the function. If there is more than one return statement a list of those objects are returned. Default inputs or an unknown length of inputs into a Matlab function is handled using a protected word ‘varargin’. The closest R equivalent is ‘…’ which will be turned into a list as the variable ‘varargin’ in the R version. There is a whole family of input and output handlers in Matlab but this is the most useful in my eyes so I gave it higher priority. Examples of this type of conversion is shown below.
| matCode | rCode |
|---|---|
|
function [ dat ] = xlsReadPretty(varargin))
didThing = 1*3;
dat = didThing / 3;
end
|
xlsReadPretty <- function(…){
varargin <- list(…)
didThing <- 1*3
dat <- didThing / 3
return(dat)
}
|
In another version, there could be options to make this conversion more integrated with the rest of the code or specifying another return class other than ‘list’. This is a precursour to the function converters by adding these user functions into the dictionary of Matlab base functions to R base functions.
These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.