John MacKintosh johnmackintosh

Modern R Development Guide

This document captures current best practices for R development, emphasizing modern tidyverse patterns, performance, and style. Last updated: August 2025

Core Principles

Use modern tidyverse patterns - Prioritize dplyr 1.1+ features, native pipe, and current APIs
Profile before optimizing - Use profvis and bench to identify real bottlenecks
Write readable code first - Optimize only when necessary and after profiling
Follow tidyverse style guide - Consistent naming, spacing, and structure

	library(data.table)

	?`[.data.table`

	DT <- data.table(x=rep(c("b","a","c"),each=3), y=c(1,3,6), v=1:9)
	X <- data.table(x=c("c","b"), v=8:7, foo=c(4,2))

	colnames(DT)
	# [1] "x" "y" "v"