I work with lots of environmental time series data from stationary instruments. This post describes why you should avoid mixing data and metadata in a single file and instead suggests an easy-to-implement, easy-to-use, maximally compact format consisting of two .csv files linked by unique identifiers. EPA Air Quality System For ... [Read more...]

Anyone writing code for use in data processing systems needs to have a well thought-out protocol for generating error messages and logs. When a complex pipeline breaks, good logs and recognizable error messages are key to debugging the problem. This post describes improvements to the MazamaCoreUtils package that help you ... [Read more...]

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Have you ever asked yourself whether your telephone number is really a number?  It’s got numbers in it but does it measure anything? How about your credit card number?  PO Box?  Social Security Number?  Zip code? What would happen if you subtracted one of these from another? As it ... [Read more...]

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In a previous post, we looked at error handling in R with the tryCatch() function and how this could be used to write Java style try-catch-finally blocks. This time we’ll look at what can be done…Read more of Easier Error Handling in R with try() → [Read more...]

The R language definition section on Exception Handling describes a very few basics about exceptions in R but is of little use to anyone trying to write robust code that can recover gracefully in the face of…Read more of Basic Error Handing in R with tryCatch() → [Read more...]