R help - Dec 2011 - Random Forests in R

I understand the original implementation of Random Forest was done in
Fortran code. In the source files of the R implementation there is a note
"C wrapper for random forests:  get input from R and drive  the Fortran
routines.". I'm far from an expert on this...does that mean that the
implementation in R is through calls to C functions only (not Fortran)?

So, would knowing C be enough to understand this code, or Fortran is also
necessary?

Thanks for your help

Axel.

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On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Axel Urbiz <axel.urbiz at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I understand the original implementation of Random Forest was done in
> Fortran code. In the source files of the R implementation there is a note
> "C wrapper for random forests: ?get input from R and drive ?the
Fortran
> routines.". I'm far from an expert on this...does that mean that
the
> implementation in R is through calls to C functions only (not Fortran)?
>
> So, would knowing C be enough to understand this code, or Fortran is also
> necessary?
I haven't seen the C and Fortran code for Random Forest but I
understand the note to say that R code calls some C functions that
pre-process (possibly re-format etc) the data, then call the actual
Random Forest method that's written in Fortran, then possibly
post-process the output and return it to R. It would imply that to
understand the actual Random Forest code, you will have to read the
Fortran source code.

Best,

Peter