RLint: Reformatting R Code to Follow the Google Style Guide

Alex Blocker
Andy Chen
Andy Chu
Tim Hesterberg
Caitlin Sadowski
Tom Zhang
R User Conference (2014)
Google Scholar

Abstract

RLint (https://code.google.com/p/google-rlint/) both checks and reformats R code to the Google R Style Guide. It warns of violations and optionally produces compliant code. It considers proper spacing, line alignment inside brackets, and other style violations, but like all lint programs does not try to handle all syntax issues.

Code that follows a uniform style eases maintenance, modification, and ensuring correctness, especially when multiple programmers are involved. Thus, RLint is automatically used within Google as part of the peer review process for R code. We encourage CRAN package authors and other R programmers to use this tool. A user can run the open-source Python-based program in a Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows machine via a command line.