[R] Potential for R to conflict with other softwares

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 11/3/2005 10:46 AM, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
> Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> writes:
> 
>> On 11/3/2005 9:11 AM, Soukup, Mat wrote:
>> > Hi.
>> > 
>> > After some time, my collegues at the Food and Drug Adminstration have
>> > finally acknowledged R as a powerful statistical computing environment.
>> > However, in order to comply with the Office of Information and Technology
>> > standards there are a couple of questions about whether R could interfere
>> > with other software. As I'm more of a driver of the R software and not a
>> > mechanic, I was hoping for the insight of the many great useRs. Below is a
>> > list of 5 proposed questions to which I value any comment.
>> > 
>> > Thank you for your time,
>> > 
>> > -Mat
>> > 
>> > 
>> 
>> These answers are about the Windows version only, but from the 
>> questions, I think that's what you were looking for.  They apply to all 
>> versions since 1.6.x at least (though the earlier ones would have put 
>> fewer entries into the registry, they put them in the same places).
>> 
>> > 1. Does R have high resolution graphics?
>> 
>> Yes, but I don't think I get the point of this question.  How would that 
>> interfere with other software?
> 
> Device drivers! We have seen cases where the FPU control word had to
> be reset (DM will know this more precisely than me, I think). We do
> have code in place to catch that particular issue though. 
> If you want to be really sure, I believe that batch runs using the
> postscript() or pdf() drivers would be immune to such issues (right?).
> 
> (BTW, does the FDA trust SAS for Windows? I've seen a weird thing or
> two happening to the display there...)
> 
>> > 
>> > 2. Does R have .dll files, or other executables which are not located in the
>> > R software directory tree?
>> 
>> No, it installs everything below R_HOME.
> 
> We do rely on MCVCRT.DLL and some other system DLLs though, and I
> think this can get modified by other software.

That's MSVCRT.DLL, the run-time library for MS Visual C++.  It has been 
distributed with the OS since Win98 or so, and we don't touch it, so 
this is more of a possibility of other software interfering with us by 
replacing it with a bad version.

> 
>> > 
>> > 3. Does R modify the Windows registry in a non-obvious way, i.e. other than
>> > defining itself and what extensions to associate with R, and what are those
>> > extensions?
>> 
>> I think all of its modifications would count as obvious.  They are 
>> mainly below HKLM/Software/R-core or HKCU/Software/R-core (where the 
>> file locations are recorded); additionally file associations are set up 
>> for .Rdata files (which are called RWorkspace files there), and an 
>> uninstall entry is made.
>> > 
>> > 4. Does R add macros to any part of MS Office?
>> 
>> No.
>> > 
>> > 5. Can you anticipate any other way in which installing and using R could
>> > disrupt the operation of another software?
>> 
>> No, not really.  Maybe users will become addicted to it?  ;-)
>> 
>> Duncan Murdoch
>> >  
>> > 
>> > ***********************************************************************
>> > Mat Soukup, Ph.D.
>> > Food and Drug Administration
>> > 10903 New Hampshire Ave. 
>> > BLDG 22 RM 5329
>> > Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002
>> > Phone: 301.796.1005
>> > ***********************************************************************
> 
> (& I think Mat is owed a big "Thank you" for his efforts).

Yes, indeed!

Duncan Murdoch