What best practices do you use for programming in R? [closed]

Question

What are some good practices for programming in R?

Since R is a special-purpose language that I don't use all the time, I typically just hack together some quick scripts that do what I need.

But what are some tips for writing clean and efficient R code?

Answer 1

You already provide some hints by stating your approach is 'hack quick scripts'. If you want best practices and structure, simple follow the established best practices from CRAN:

• create a package, this opens the door to running R CMD check which is very useful
• as many people have stated, having a package helps you in the code writing stage too as you are somewhat forced to document the code; that is a Good Thing (TM)
• once you have a package, add code in the \examples{} section of the documentation as this will be running during R CMD check and provides an easy entry to regression testing
• once you get used to regression testing, start to use a package such as RUnit; that really is best practices
• JD's pointer to the Google Style Guide is a good one too. That isn't the only style guide as e.g. Henrik's R Coding Convention precedes it by a few years; and there is also Hadley's riff on Google's style guide
• Otherwise, the oldie-but-goldie 'do what your colleagues and coauthors do' also applies

Answer 2

I recommend Josh Reich's Load, Clean, Func, Do workflow from this previous question.

In addition I recommend following coding guidelines such as Google's R Style Guide. Using a coding style guide makes reading the code later so much easier.