Distance Object Manipulation Tools.

disttools

Improved methods for handling 'dist' objects in R.

Overview

Working with 'dist' objects in R can be challenging. What makes it challenging is that retrieving the distance between any two points requires specifying a 1 dimensional index. This is non-intuitive and requires the user to write additional code, which slows development and analysis. To avoid this problem, the function as.matrix has typically been used to convert a 'dist' object into a matrix. Once converted, distances can be accessed in the same way any element of a matrix is accessed, namely using two indices. Unfortunately, as.matrix conversion more than doubles memory usage. For small 'dist' objects this may not be a problem. However, for large 'dist' objects this can be quite problematic. The function get_dists in disttools solves this problem by facilitating rapid retrieval of the distance between any pair of points stored in a 'dist' object.

Installation

disttools can be installed from CRAN or GitHub by executing either of the following:

# Install from CRAN.
install.packages("disttools")

# Install from GitHub.
install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("mamc-dci/disttools")

Usage

The package can be loaded by executing:

# Load the package.
library(disttools)

The help file for the function get_dists can be accessed by executing:

?get_dists

If installed, the package vignette, complete with examples, can be viewed by executing:

browseVignettes("disttools")

Alternatively, the vignette is available on the package's CRAN page: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=disttools

Disclaimer

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official policy of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.