## 1 Overview

RPy is a very simple, yet robust, Python interface to the R Programming Language. It can manage all kinds of R objects and can execute arbitrary R functions (including the graphic functions). All the errors from the R language are converted to Python exceptions. Any module that later were installed on the R system, can easily be used from within Python, without introducing any changes. Starting from version 0.3, RPy works on any POSIX system and Windows.

The RPy code is initially inspired in RSPython, which is part of the Omegahat project. The main goals of RPy are:

1. It should provide a very robust Python interface to R (segfaults shouldn’t happen [tm]).
2. It should be as transparent and easy to use as possible.
3. It should be usable for real scientific and statistical computations.

Currently, RPy has a good degree of stability (in spite of the low version number). It provides a very customizable conversion system between Python and R types (see Conversion system), user defined I/O functions and a complete handling of the R errors via Python exceptions.

Since version 0.2, RPy uses the Numeric extension module for the conversion of arrays. However, if it is not available, RPy converts R arrays to Python lists.

Many things are still to be done (see To do), but priority one is the porting to Windows.