Advanced R helps you understand how R works at a fundamental level. It is designed for R programmers who want to deepen their understanding of the language, and programmers experienced in other languages who want to understand what makes R different and special.

This book will teach you the foundations of R; three fundamental programming paradigms (functional, object-oriented, and metaprogramming); and powerful techniques for debugging and optimising
your code.

By reading this book, you will learn:

• • The difference between an object and its name, and why the distinction is important

• • The important vector data structures, how they fit together, and how you can pull them apart using subsetting

• • The fine details of functions and environments

• • The condition system, which powers messages, warnings, and errors

• • The powerful functional programming paradigm, which can replace many for loops

• • The three most important OO systems: S3, S4, and R6

• • The tidy eval toolkit for metaprogramming, which allows you to manipulate code and control evaluation

• • Effective debugging techniques that you can deploy, regardless of how your code is run

• • How to find and remove performance bottlenecks

The second edition is a comprehensive update:

• • New foundational chapters: “Names and values,” “Control flow,” and “Conditions”

• • comprehensive coverage of object oriented programming with chapters on S3, S4, R6, and how to choose between them

• • Much deeper coverage of metaprogramming, including the new tidy evaluation framework