I'm looking into making R functions available from a Visual Basic application. Venables and Ripley point out in _S Programming_ that this is possible with automation via DCOM and by linking to R DLL(s) at compile time. I'm intrigued by the latter possibility, and would appreciate information anyone might be able to provide, especially: 1. Do I need to link to R.dll only or would I need other DLL's as well? 2. Where does the parser fit into this? What is involved in having an application interact with the parser? 3. At the moment I'm only thinking about the feasibility and the potential benefits of this route, but if I pursue it, I'll certainly need more specific information. I gather that currently there is no documentation about interacting with the DLL's directly, aside from whatever is in the source code. Are there any other written materials that I might find helpful? And would specific questions about this topic be more appropriately addressed to the development list rather than this list? By the way, I've used S-Plus for years and I just downloaded R a few days ago. Already I've made use of some features R enjoys over S-Plus. For example, optimizing data-dependent functions (in my case a penalized likelihood function) is more straightforward in R than in S. I'm very excited and enthusiastic about this. Many thanks to all those who have made this possible! Thanks very much for any information, Jim Garrett jim_garrett at bd.com Becton Dickinson Baltimore, Maryland, USA -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._