Rcall: Calling R from Matlab

TL;DR

Rcall is a MATLAB interface that enables direct access to R's statistical methods and packages, facilitating enhanced computational biology workflows by seamless data exchange and command execution.

Contribution

It introduces a new MATLAB interface for calling R functions directly, expanding MATLAB's capabilities with R's extensive statistical tools.

Findings

Enables seamless data transfer between MATLAB and R.

Supports execution of R commands within MATLAB environment.

Compatible across Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Abstract

Summary: R and Matlab are two high-level scientific programming languages which are frequently applied in computational biology. To extend the wide variety of available and approved implementations, we present the Rcall interface which runs in MATLAB and provides direct access to methods and software packages implemented in R. Rcall involves passing the relevant data to R, executing the specified R commands and forwarding the results to MATLAB for further use. The evaluation and conversion of the basic data types in R and MATLAB are provided. Due to the easy embedding of R facilities, Rcall greatly extends the functionality of the MATLAB programming language. Availability: Source code is freely available at https://github.com/kreutz-lab/Rcall, implemented in MATLAB and supported on Linux, MS Windows and Mac OS X.