I could equally have titled this question, "Is it good enough for CRAN?"
I have a collection of functions that I've built up for specific tasks. Some of these are convenience functions:
# Returns odds/evens from a vector
odds=function(vec) {
stopifnot(class(vec)=="integer")
ret = vec[fpart(vec/2)!=0]
ret
}
evens=function(vec) {
stopifnot(class(vec)=="integer")
ret = vec[fpart(vec/2)==0]
ret
}
Some are minor additions that have proven useful in answering common SO question:
# Shift a vector over by n spots
# wrap adds the entry at the beginning to the end
# pad does nothing unless wrap is false, in which case it specifies whether to pad with NAs
shift <- function(vec,n=1,wrap=TRUE,pad=FALSE) {
if(length(vec)<abs(n)) {
#stop("Length of vector must be greater than the magnitude of n \n")
}
if(n==0) {
return(vec)
} else if(length(vec)==n) {
# return empty
length(vec) <- 0
return(vec)
} else if(n>0) {
returnvec <- vec[seq(n+1,length(vec) )]
if(wrap) {
returnvec <- c(returnvec,vec[seq(n)])
} else if(pad) {
returnvec <- c(returnvec,rep(NA,n))
}
} else if(n<0) {
returnvec <- vec[seq(1,length(vec)-abs(n))]
if(wrap) {
returnvec <- c( vec[seq(length(vec)-abs(n)+1,length(vec))], returnvec )
} else if(pad) {
returnvec <- c( rep(NA,abs(n)), returnvec )
}
}
return(returnvec)
}
The most important are extensions to existing classes that can't be found anywhere else (e.g. a CDF panel function for lattice plots, various xtable and LaTeX output functions, classes for handling and converting between geospatial object types and performing various GIS-like operations such as overlays).
I would like to make these available somewhere on the internet in R-ized form (e.g. posting them on a blog as plain text functions is not what I'm looking for), so that maintenance is easier and so that I and others can access them from any computer that I go to. The logical thing to do is to make a package out of them and post them to CRAN--and indeed I already have them packaged up. But is this collection of functions suitable for a CRAN package?
I have two main concerns:
- The functions don't seem to have any coherent overlay. It's just a collection of functions that do lots of different things.
- My code isn't always the prettiest. I've tried to clean it up as I learned better coding practices, but producing R Core-worthy beautiful code is not in the cards.
The CRAN webpage is surprisingly bereft of guidelines on posting. Should I post to CRAN, given that some people will find it useful but that it will in some sense forever lock R into having some pretty basic function names taken up? Or is there another place I can use an install.packages-like command to install from? Note I'd rather avoid posting the package to a webpage and having people have to memorize the URL to install the package (not least for version control issues).