In general KnitR was designed to combine a report document with R code ("Knit" a document with "R" code "KnitR"). The follow learning modul show how to integrate Octace (Open Source software numeric calculations) in KnitR code for Dynamic Document Generation.

Use Octave in KnitR

Octave Code in KnitR Documents edit

The following section explains how to perform calculation with Octave in KnitR as an R-package.

Working Octave Code edit

Assume we have the following Octave code, that plots a function in Octave and saves the generated code in a JPG file myfigure.jpg.

  x = -10:0.1:10;
  plot (x, sin (x)); 
  print -djpg myfigure.jpg

Embed the Octave Code in the KnitR document edit

The code chunk in R-Markdown looks a bit different than the code chunk in the statistical language R.

  • (Path to Octave) The header must contain the location/path to the Octave interpreter that executes the code. Here Octave is located at /usr/local/bin/octave/ on a Linux machine. You can identify the path to Octave on Linux and MacOSX by which octave. On Windows add the path to the octave.exe.
  • (Echo-Boolean) echo=TRUE prints the code in the document and executes the code (i.e. generates the figure). With echo=FALSE the code will be executed but the code will not appear in the document.

Now we will use the Octave-Code in the R-Markdown document with the 3 backticks. The next code chunk is integrated in KnitR markdown with preceeding text and an import in the document for the generated figure.

  This is pure text before code chunk in Octave.
  ```{octave,engine.path='/usr/local/bin/octave/',results='asis',echo=TRUE}
  x = -10:0.1:10;
  plot (x, sin (x)); 
  print -djpg myfigure.jpg 
  ```
  More text and then import the generated figure from Octave.
  ![My Plot of the sin-function with Octave](myfigure.jpg)

The import of the generated figure is not necessary with R code. With an R code chunk a plot command in the code chunk will be visible in the output document. After the lass3 backticks there is some more text in the R-Markdown document. The generate figure will be imported with a standard image import syntax in R-Markdown.