Aspects of CXXR Internals

The CXXR project aims gradually to refactor the fundamental parts of the R interpreter from C into C++ whilst retaining the full functionality of the standard distribution of R. It is hoped that this will enable researchers more easily to enhance the functionality of R by allowing them to extend the interpreter’s internal C++ class hierarchy. The paper summarises progress to date and describes key aspects of the internal implementation of the CXXR where this differs from the standard interpreter. It also explains stratagems used to facilitate updating CXXR to reflect a new release of R, and examines the relative performance of CXXR and the standard interpreter.