quickr 0.3.0

This release adds major new support for linear algebra, local functions, sapply(), and OpenMP parallelism, along with a broad round of reliability, compatibility, and compiler/runtime improvements.

Major new features

Matrix and linear algebra support

• Added initial matrix / linear algebra support from base R, using the same BLAS/LAPACK as R. Supported operations now include %*%, t(), crossprod(), tcrossprod(), outer() with FUN = "*", %o%, forwardsolve(), backsolve(), diag(), chol(), chol2inv(), solve(), and qr.solve(). (#77, #79, @mns-nordicals)

• This also adds support for:

  • drop() for rank 0-2 inputs, including singleton matrices.
  • svd() results via $d, $u, and $v, whether accessed from s <- svd(x) or directly as svd(x)$d, svd(x)$u, or svd(x)$v.
  • .Machine$double.eps.

Local closures and sapply()

• Added support for local closures inside compiled functions, including sapply() lowering with host association for captures and support for simplify = "array" for higher-rank outputs.

• Example:

  f <- function(i) x[i] + 1.0
  out <- sapply(seq_along(out), f)

• This lowering matches R’s copy-on-modify semantics: modifying variables from the parent scope triggers a copy in the local closure scope.

• Added support for superassignment (<<-) inside local closures, including subset targets such as x[i] <<- ..., to explicitly mutate variables in the enclosing quick function scope. For example:

  apply_boundary_conditions <- function() {
    temp[1, ] <<- 0
    temp[nx, ] <<- 0
    temp[, 1] <<- 0
    temp[, ny] <<- 0
    NULL
  }
  apply_boundary_conditions()

• Local closures also support optional arguments with NULL defaults, with validation to ensure optional arguments are initialized via is.null() before use.

Parallel execution

• Added OpenMP parallelization via declare(parallel()) / declare(omp()) for supported for loops and sapply() calls.

Binding and iteration

• Added support for cbind() and rbind() for rank-0/1/2 inputs, with scalar recycling only and strict length checks for non-scalar inputs.

• Improved lowering for for (... in <iterable>), including value iteration such as for (v in x), and support for rev() wrappers on supported iterables.

Language and runtime additions

• Added support for throwing errors with stop(). (#86)

• Added support for as.integer() coercion from double, logical, and integer values. double inputs are truncated toward 0.

• Added support for tanh() as a unary intrinsic.

• Added support for rev() for reversing rank-0/1 vectors, including bind(c) logicals, preserving NA storage where possible.

• Added support for abs() in size expressions used by declare(type(...)), for example: declare(type(x = integer(abs(end - start) + 1L))).

• Improved support for array(data = ..., dim = ...) for shape construction in user code.

Compiler and lowering improvements

• quickr now supports nested compilation scopes with local declaration emission, enabling block-scoped temporaries and local closures lowered to internal procedures under contains.

  • This helps in two ways. First, in large compiled functions, declared intermediate results no longer need to stay live for the full duration of the function, which can reduce peak memory use.

  • Second, it improves handling of large temporaries across compilers. In particular, LLVM flang may place temporary arrays on the stack by default, which can cause problems when those temporaries are large. This work also led to better control over when temporaries need to be emitted as heap allocatable.

• Example of a block-scoped temporary used for expression subscripting:

  out[1] <- ifelse((x > 0.0)[2, 3], 1.0, 0.0)

Reliability, compatibility, and diagnostics

• Added extensive tests and snapshots covering local closures, sapply(), block-scoped temporaries, and package compilation behavior, including internal procedure name collisions.

• Fixed [ subsetting on scalars with both drop = TRUE and drop = FALSE, simplifying to Fortran scalars so subsetted scalars in reductions such as min(m[1, 1], m[2, 1]) no longer emit minval on scalars. (#64)

• Fixed nested scalar min() / max() in reductions, so clamp-style expressions like min(max(x[i], lo), hi) work reliably.

• Fixed an issue where subsetting logical arrays could fail when compiling quick functions, for example (x > 0)[2, 3]. (#68)

• Fixed a crash when compiling chained or fall-through assignments such as a <- b <- 1. (#60)

• quick() now supports dotted symbols such as foo.bar for arguments, locals, and loop variables. Conflicting names that map to the same Fortran symbol now error, since Fortran is case-insensitive.

• Fixed C bridge size checks for dotted argument names used in declare(type(...)) size expressions, for example type(x = double(foo.bar)).

• quick() now gives a helpful error when a function argument is used without being declared through declare(type(arg = ...)).

• Fixed an error in invalid subscript arity reporting, for example x[1, 2, 3] on a matrix now errors cleanly instead of failing while formatting the message.

Breaking changes

• Vector-matrix recycling in arithmetic is now restricted to recycling along the first axes only.

Platform and toolchain

• Lowered the minimum supported R version to 4.3.0 and added a backport of declare() for R < 4.4.0. (#67)

• On macOS, quickr will use LLVM flang (flang-new) for compilation when available, for example after brew install flang. This is optional and can be disabled with options(quickr.prefer_flang = FALSE).

quickr 0.2.1

• Added support for ! and unary - and + (#49, @mns-nordicals)

• Functions can now return multiple arrays in a list(), optionally named (#49, @mns-nordicals).

• Updates for changes in the R-devel C API (#61)

quickr 0.2.0

• Internal utility r2f() print method now shows the generated c_bridge for translated subroutines.

• Added support for nrow(), ncol() and dim() (#21, @mikmart).

• Added support for runif() with integration to R’s RNG (#22, #45).

• Added support for while, repeat, break, next.

• Added support for %% and %/%.

• Added support for expression return values.

• Fix passing a scalar (rank-0) arg to reduction intrinsics (min, max, prod, sum).

• Fixed an issue where / might perform integer division if one of the operands is an integer type (#33, #41).

• Fixed an issue with dll symbol registration when quick() is used in a package (#19).

• Fixed segfault encountered on Windows with variable sized arrays.

• Added workaround for cases where the compiler error message might not display correctly in RStudio.

• Improved error message when using case-sensitive variable names (#18, #36, #39)

• Added AGENTS.md and scripts/setup_codex.sh to enable the ChatGPT/Codex agent to run tests in a docker container configured without internet access.

quickr 0.1.0

• Initial CRAN submission.