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Comparison · Analytics
dggridR vs units
A side-by-side editorial comparison of dggridR and units — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
dggridR vs units: at a glance
What is dggridR?
A discrete global grid generator grew cell traversal and became a usable spatial index.
dggridR builds discrete global grids — icosahedral tessellations of the Earth into equal-area hexagonal or triangular cells — by wrapping the DGGRID C++ engine. The 4.1.0 release adds dgneighbors, dgchildren and dgparent for moving between adjacent cells and across resolutions, plus dgpoints_to_cells and dgbin_points for mapping and aggregating point data into cells. New aperture 7 and mixed-aperture ISEA43H grid types arrive alongside them.
What is units?
units reaches 1.0 by rewriting its parser and accepting the breakage that comes with it.
units attaches physical units to R vectors on top of the udunits2 library, covering arithmetic, conversion and ggplot2 scales. Version 1.0-0 replaced the unit-expression tokenizer so numbers are consistently treated as prefixes, and expressions like ml/min/1.73m^2 now parse the way physiologists write them. Printing follows NIST conventions, and 1.0-1 is a fix pass over memory handling and parser edge cases.
dggridR vs units: editorial side-by-side
dggridR
0.0ANALYTICS
A discrete global grid generator grew cell traversal and became a usable spatial index.
◆ Current state
dggridR builds discrete global grids — icosahedral tessellations of the Earth into equal-area hexagonal or triangular cells — by wrapping the DGGRID C++ engine. The 4.1.0 release adds dgneighbors, dgchildren and dgparent for moving between adjacent cells and across resolutions, plus dgpoints_to_cells and dgbin_points for mapping and aggregating point data into cells. New aperture 7 and mixed-aperture ISEA43H grid types arrive alongside them.
◆ Where it's heading
The package changed hands in effect as well as in code: the 4.0.0 engine update to DGGRID v9.0b and the first real test suite were contributed by Sebastian Krantz, who also maintains the upstream engine fork, and 4.1.0's feature burst followed two weeks later. The direction of that burst is unmistakable — away from generating grids for plotting and toward using them as an indexing structure that point data gets binned into and navigated through.
◆ Prediction
Expect the cell hierarchy functions to extend to non-hexagonal apertures and multi-level traversal, closing the remaining gaps against established global indexing systems.
units
0.0ANALYTICS
units reaches 1.0 by rewriting its parser and accepting the breakage that comes with it.
◆ Current state
units attaches physical units to R vectors on top of the udunits2 library, covering arithmetic, conversion and ggplot2 scales. Version 1.0-0 replaced the unit-expression tokenizer so numbers are consistently treated as prefixes, and expressions like ml/min/1.73m^2 now parse the way physiologists write them. Printing follows NIST conventions, and 1.0-1 is a fix pass over memory handling and parser edge cases.
◆ Where it's heading
The long 0.8-x run was accretion — ggplot2 scales absorbed from ggforce, ud_convert(), matrix methods, steady performance work — while known parsing defects stayed in place. The 1.0 release finally traded backwards compatibility for correct parsing, and 1.0-1's pointer-wrapping and exception-propagation work suggests the C++ glue is being hardened behind it. Fixes cluster at the udunits2 boundary, which remains the main source of surprises.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued patch releases against udunits2 quirks and the new tokenizer's fallout rather than new surface area, with the ggplot2 integration and conversion helpers already in place.
Alternatives to dggridR and units
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either dggridR or units.
n1qn1c
A Fortran-descended optimizer got thread-safe, then found two flags that never worked.
ggstatsplot
ggstatsplot reached 1.0 by adding tests, having outsourced its statistics years ago.
collapse
collapse got a JSS paper and a 7x fmean speedup in the same release.
gtsummary
gtsummary is quietly rebuilding itself around analysis results data, one table verb at a time.
broadcast
broadcast is filling in NumPy-style array broadcasting for R, operator by operator.
See all dggridR alternatives → · See all units alternatives →
Recent activity from dggridR and units
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 3mo agodggridRCell neighbors, parents and children make the grid navigable ⚡
- 3mo agodggridRBundled DGGRID engine updated to v9.0b with a test suite
- 3mo agodggridRMaster merged into development ahead of the 4.0 work
- 5mo agounitsMemory-leak and udunits2 parsing fixes after 1.0
- 10mo agounitsNew tokenizer parses compound units correctly ⚡
- 1y agounitsCopy semantics fix in ud_convert(); C++17 for old R
- 1y agounitscbind/rbind methods, ud_convert() and broad fixes
- 1y agounitsSilences a CRAN compiler warning
- 2y agounitsRestores simplify=FALSE for identical units
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between dggridR and units?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. dggridR and units are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is dggridR better than units?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. dggridR and units are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to dggridR?
Top dggridR alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "dggridR alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/dggridr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to units?
Top units alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "units alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/units-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.