title: Passing in Command Line Arguments and Parallel Cluster/Multicore Batching in R with batch.
abstract: It is often useful to rerun a command line R script with some slight change in the parameters used to run it - a new set of parameters for a simulation, a different dataset to process, etc. The R packagebatchprovides a means to pass in multiple command line options, including vectors of values in the usual R format, easily into R. The same script can be setup to run things in parallel via different command line arguments. The R packagebatchalso provides a means to simplify this parallel batching by allowing one to use R and an R-like syntax for arguments to spread a script across a cluster or local multicore/multiprocessor computer, with automated syntax for several popular cluster types. Finally it provides a means to aggregate the results together of multiple processes run on a cluster.
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Francisco.
authors.forename: Thomas J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Hoffmann
keywords: R; batch; cluster; command line arguments; parallel