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rminify

Any services, extensions out there to minify R code?

Are there existing services to minify R code? Seems easy to find a JS minifier, I have not yet found something similar for R. I'd be happy with an Atom extension or a web-based service

Solution

  • You can leverage R's internal parser to minify code. For example, if you have some text like:

    myList <- list(a = 1,
               b =2
               ,c = list( a = 1,
                     b = 2)
)
myOtherList <- list(a = 1, 

            #My comment

            b = 1)

    in a file called myFile.R

    You can parse the expression and then coerce it to a character, something with a call like:

    paste(as.character(parse(text = text)),collapse = "\n")

    which will output an expression per line, without comments:

    myList <- list(a = 1, b = 2, c = list(a = 1, b = 2))
myOtherList <- list(a = 1, b = 1)

    This is a fun example of using parsed code and doing modifications to it. Parsing as a tool creates a whole new world of opportunity for a developer. I would recommend readings Peter Norvig's lisp interpreter in python as an entry point to code grammar, parsing and abstract syntax trees(ASTs) : http://norvig.com/lispy.html

    If indeed you wanted to minify the code symbolically as well (replace myVarName with a for example) You would be able to use the AST returned and reassign all the variables to a "minified" version, and then dump the code.

    Hope this helps!