R and C++!

romain@r-enthusiasts.com @romainfrancois

Romain François

Topics

• Rcpp

• dplyr

• Rcpp98, Rcpp11

Rcpp

54releases since 2008

0.10.6currently

!0.10.7 out soon, and perhaps it will be called 0.11.0

172cran packages depend on it

96 896lines of code (*.cpp + *.h)

int add( int a, int b){ return a + b ; }

#include <Rcpp.h> !

// [[Rcpp::export]] int add( int a, int b){ return a + b ; }

A bridge between R and C++

#include <Rcpp.h> !

// [[Rcpp::export]] int add( int a, int b){ return a + b ; }

> sourceCpp( "add.cpp" ) > add( 1, 2 ) [1] 3

sourceCpp

R data structures

• vectors: NumericVector, IntegerVector, …

• lists : List

• functions: Function

• environments: Environment

Key design decision

Rcpp objects are proxy objects to the underlying R data structure

Example: NumericVector// [[Rcpp::export]] double sum( NumericVector x){ int n = x.size() ; !

double res = 0.0 ; for( int i=0; i<n; i++){ res += x[i] ; } !

return res ; }

Example: List

List res = List::create( _["a"] = 1, _["b"] = "foo" ) ; res.attr( "class" ) = "myclass" ; !

int a = res["a"] ; res["b"] = 42 ;

Example: Function

Function rnorm( "rnorm" ) ; NumericVector x = rnorm( 10, _["mean"] = 30, _["sd"] = 100 ) ;

Benchmark

n <- length(x) m <- 0.0 for( i in 1:n ){ m <- m + x[i]^2 / n }

Benchmark

m <- mean( x^2 )

Benchmark#include <Rcpp.h> using namespace Rcpp ; !

double square(x){ return x*x ; } !

// [[Rcpp::export]] double fun( NumericVector x){ int n = x.size() ; double res = 0.0 ; for( int i=0; i<n; i++){ res += square(x[i]) / n ; } return res ; }

Benchmark

10 000 100 000 1 000 000

Dumb R 1008 10 214 104 000

Vectorized R 24 125 1 021

C++ 13 80 709

Execution times (micro seconds)

Benchmark

m <- mean( x^2 )

C++ data structures Modules

The usual bank account exampleclass Account { private: double balance ; ! public: Account( ) : balance(0){} ! double get_balance(){ return balance ; } ! void withdraw(double x){ balance -= x ; } ! void deposit(double x ){ balance += x ; } } ;

RCPP_MODULE(BankAccount){ class_<Account>( "Account" ) .constructor() ! .property( "balance", Account::get_balance ) ! .method( "deposit", Account::deposit) .method( "withdraw", Account::withdraw) ; }

account <- new( Account ) account$deposit( 1000 ) account$balance account$withdraw( 200 ) account$balance account$balance <- 200

PackagesRcpp.package.skeleton

compileAttributes !

!

devtools::load_all

dplyr

dplyr

• Package by Hadley Whickham

• Plyr specialised for data frames: faster & with remote datastores

• Great performance thanks to C++

arrange

arrange(Batting, playerID, yearID)

Unit: milliseconds expr min lq median uq max neval df 186.64016 188.48495 190.8989 192.42140 195.36592 10 dt 349.25496 352.12806 357.4358 403.45465 405.30055 10 cpp 12.20485 13.85538 14.0081 16.72979 23.95173 10 base 181.68259 182.58014 184.6904 186.33794 189.70377 10 dt_raw 166.94213 170.15704 170.6418 220.89911 223.42155 10

ex: Arrange by year within each player

filter

filter(Batting, G == max(G))

Unit: milliseconds expr min lq median uq max neval df 371.96066 375.98652 380.92300 389.78870 430.2898 10 dt 47.37897 49.39681 51.23722 52.79181 95.8757 10 cpp 34.63382 35.27462 36.48151 38.30672 106.2422 10 base 141.81983 144.87670 147.36940 148.67299 173.8763 10

Find the year for which each player played the most games

summarise

summarise(x, ab = mean(AB))

Unit: microseconds expr min lq median uq max neval df 470726.569 475168.481 495500.076 498223.152 502601.494 10 dt 23002.422 23923.691 25888.191 28517.318 28683.864 10 cpp 756.265 820.921 838.529 864.624 950.079 10 base 253189.624 259167.496 263124.650 273097.845 326663.243 10 dt_raw 22462.560 23469.528 24438.422 25718.549 28385.158 10

Compute the average number of at bats for each player

Vector Visitor

class VectorVisitor { public: virtual ~VectorVisitor(){} /** hash the element of the visited vector at index i */ virtual size_t hash(int i) const = 0 ; /** are the elements at indices i and j equal */ virtual bool equal(int i, int j) const = 0 ; ! /** creates a new vector, of the same type as the visited vector, by * copying elements at the given indices */ virtual SEXP subset( const Rcpp::IntegerVector& index ) const = 0 ; !}

Traversing an R vector of any type with the same interface

Vector Visitor inline VectorVisitor* visitor( SEXP vec ){ switch( TYPEOF(vec) ){ case INTSXP: if( Rf_inherits(vec, "factor" )) return new FactorVisitor( vec ) ; return new VectorVisitorImpl<INTSXP>( vec ) ; case REALSXP: if( Rf_inherits( vec, "Date" ) ) return new DateVisitor( vec ) ; if( Rf_inherits( vec, "POSIXct" ) ) return new POSIXctVisitor( vec ) ; return new VectorVisitorImpl<REALSXP>( vec ) ; case LGLSXP: return new VectorVisitorImpl<LGLSXP>( vec ) ; case STRSXP: return new VectorVisitorImpl<STRSXP>( vec ) ; default: break ; } // should not happen return 0 ; }

Chunked evaluation

• R expression to evaluate: mean(Sepal.Length)

• Sepal.Length ∊ iris

• dplyr knows mean.

• fast and memory efficient algorithm

ir <- group_by( iris, Species) summarise(ir, Sepal.Length = mean(Sepal.Length) )

Hybrid evaluationmyfun <- function(x) x+x ir <- group_by( iris, Species) summarise(ir, xxx = mean(Sepal.Length) + min(Sepal.Width) - myfun(Sepal.Length) )

#1: fast evaluation of mean(Sepal.Length). 5.006 + min(Sepal.Width) - myfun(Sepal.Length)

#2: fast evaluation of min(Sepal.Width). 5.006 + 3.428 - myfun(Sepal.Length)

#3: fast evaluation of 5.006 + 3.428. 8.434 - myfun(Sepal.Length)

#4: R evaluation of 8.434 - myfun(Sepal.Length).

Hybrid Evaluation!

• mean, min, max, sum, sd, var, n, +, -, /, *, <, >, <=, >=, &&, ||

• packages can register their own hybrid evaluation handler.

• See hybrid-evaluation vignette

Rcpp11

Rcpp11

• Using C++11 features

• Smaller

• More memory efficient

• Clean

C++11 : lambda

// [[Rcpp::export]] NumericVector foo( NumericVector v){ NumericVector res = sapply( v, [](double x){ return x*x; } ) ; return res ; }

Lambda: function defined where used. Similar to apply functions in R.

C++11 : for each loop

std::vector<double> v ; for( int i=0; i<v.size(); v++){ double d = v[i] ; // do something with d }

for( double d: v){ // do stuff with d }

C++98, C++03

C++11

C++11 : init list

NumericVector x = NumericVector::create( 1, 2 ) ;

NumericVector x = {1, 2} ;

C++98, C++03

C++11

Other changes

• Move semantics : used under the hood in Rcpp11. Using less memory.

• Less code bloat. Variadoic templates

Rcpp11 article

• I’m writing an article about C++11

• Explain the merits of C++11

• What’s next: C++14, C++17

• Goal is to make C++11 welcome on CRAN

• https://github.com/romainfrancois/cpp11_article

Questions!

romain@r-enthusiasts.com @romainfrancois

Romain François