How to Use the commonsMath Package

David B. Dahl

Overview

The commonsMath package provides access to the Apache Commons Mathematics Library. It can can accessed via the:

rscala package, or
rJava package.

We demonstrate below how to use it in:

R scripts, or
R packages

Usage in R Scripts

Access via rscala

 library("rscala")
s <-scala("commonsMath")
rng1 <-s$.new_org.apache.commons.math3.random.RandomDataGenerator()
rng1$reSeed(7342L)
rng1$nextGaussian(0,1)

Access via rJava

 library("rJava")
 .jinit(Sys.glob(file.path(system.file(package="commonsMath"), "java", "*.jar")))
rng2 <-.jnew("org.apache.commons.math3.random.RandomDataGenerator")
rng2$reSeed(.jlong(7342L))
rng2$nextGaussian(0,1)

Usage in R Packages

Access via rscala

The DESCRIPTION should have Imports: rscala, commonsMath.

The NAMESPACE should have import(rscala).

Define an .onLoad function like the following:

.onLoad <-function(libname, pkgname) {
 s <-scala("commonsMath")
 assign("s", s, envir = parent.env(environment()))
}

Package functions can then assess classes and methods from the commonsMath package, e.g.:

rstdnorm <-function() {
 rng1 <-s$.new_org.apache.commons.math3.random.RandomDataGenerator()
 rng1$nextGaussian(0.0,1.0)
}

Access via rJava

The DESCRIPTION should have Imports: rJava, commonsMath.

The NAMESPACE should first have import(rscala) and then have import(commonsMath).

Define an .onLoad function like the following:

.onLoad <-function(libname, pkgname) {
 .jpackage(pkgname, lib.loc=libname)
}

Package functions can then assess classes and methods from the commonsMath package, e.g.:

rstdnorm <-function() {
 rng2 <-.jnew("org.apache.commons.math3.random.RandomDataGenerator")
 rng2$nextGaussian(0,1)
}