Misc: Argument processing and general info

In gsl: Wrapper for the Gnu Scientific Library

Argument processing and general info

Description

Various widely used functions in the package

Usage

process.args(...)
strictify(val,status)

Arguments

...	Argument list to be coerced to the same length
val	Value component of &result
status	status integer

Details

Function process.args() is an internal function used to massage the arguments into a form suitable for passing to .C(). For example, in function hyperg_0F1(c,x), one wants each of hyperg_0F1(0.1, c(0.3,0.4)) and hyperg_0F1(c(0.1,0.2), 0.3) and hyperg_0F1(c(0.1,0.2),c(0.3,0.4)) to behave sensibly.

Function process.args() is used widely in the package, taking an arbitrary number of arguments and returning a list whose elements are vectors of the same length. Most of the special functions use process.args() to ensure that the returned value takes the attributes of the input argument with most elements where possible.

Function strictify() uses the status value returned by the “error” form of the GSL special functions to make values returned with a nonzero error a NaN. In most of the special functions, strictify() is called if argument strict takes its default value of TRUE. Setting it to FALSE sometimes returns a numerical value as per the GSL reference manual.

In most of the special functions, if argument give takes its default value of FALSE, only a numerical value is returned. If TRUE, error information and the status (see preceding paragraph) is also returned.

Following tips found on R-devel:

1. Download and extract source code of R-package gsl

2. Use gsl-config --libs to get the path to GSL's lib directory (-L<path-to-lib>), use gsl-config --cflags to get the path to GSL's include directory (-I<path-to-include>)

3. Change Makevars in gsl/src:

   • Add -L<path-to-lib> to PKG_LIBS

   • Add (new) line: PKG_CPPFLAGS=-I<path-to-include>

4. Install gsl via

   LDFLAGS=-L<path-to-lib>; export LDFLAGS

   CPPFLAGS=-I<path-to-include>;export CPPFLAGS

   R CMD INSTALL gsl

Author(s)

Robin K. S. Hankin

References

https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/

gsl documentation built on Feb. 16, 2023, 10:32 p.m.