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n2kanalysis has spent eight years wiring INLA models to an S3 bucket.
Comparison · Analytics
fastplyr vs filearray
A side-by-side editorial comparison of fastplyr and filearray — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
fastplyr vs filearray: at a glance
What is fastplyr?
A fast dplyr stand-in that keeps finding new places to skip work entirely.
fastplyr reimplements the dplyr verbs on a faster backend, exposing f_summarise, f_mutate, f_reframe and a set of group metadata helpers alongside optimized joins and quantiles. The most recent release removes non-API C functions and raises the floor to R 4.5.0, a steep requirement that follows the C++17 requirement introduced a release earlier. The verb surface itself has been stable since 0.9.0.
What is filearray?
The on-disk array layer under RAVE spends its releases hunting segfaults.
filearray stores large arrays on disk and reads them back with little memory overhead, serving as the storage substrate for the RAVE intracranial EEG stack. The 0.2.2 release fixes out-of-bound indexing that caused segfaults along certain margins and an ASAN-flagged signed integer overflow in the load path. The user-facing API has been stable since 0.1.6.
fastplyr vs filearray: editorial side-by-side
fastplyr
0.0ANALYTICS
A fast dplyr stand-in that keeps finding new places to skip work entirely.
◆ Current state
fastplyr reimplements the dplyr verbs on a faster backend, exposing f_summarise, f_mutate, f_reframe and a set of group metadata helpers alongside optimized joins and quantiles. The most recent release removes non-API C functions and raises the floor to R 4.5.0, a steep requirement that follows the C++17 requirement introduced a release earlier. The verb surface itself has been stable since 0.9.0.
◆ Where it's heading
The optimization strategy has shifted from making individual functions fast to reasoning about expressions before evaluating them — 0.9.9 began marking simple operators as group-unaware so expressions built only from them are evaluated across the whole data frame rather than per group. That is a structural bet: the package increasingly inspects what you wrote to decide how much work is actually needed. Running alongside it is a steady tightening of build requirements, with C++17, R 4.5.0 and CRAN's C API rules all landing within a year.
◆ Prediction
Expect the group-unaware classification to widen to more functions, since each addition compounds across every grouped expression, and expect the dependency floors to keep rising as the package tracks CRAN's compiled-code policy.
filearray
0.0ANALYTICS
The on-disk array layer under RAVE spends its releases hunting segfaults.
◆ Current state
filearray stores large arrays on disk and reads them back with little memory overhead, serving as the storage substrate for the RAVE intracranial EEG stack. The 0.2.2 release fixes out-of-bound indexing that caused segfaults along certain margins and an ASAN-flagged signed integer overflow in the load path. The user-facing API has been stable since 0.1.6.
◆ Where it's heading
This is infrastructure whose release history reads as a memory-safety log: unprotected C++ variables, buffer sizes exceeding array length, allocations one byte short, endianness on big-endian platforms, and now out-of-bound margins caught by sanitizers. The one sustained feature direction is reducing the cost of operating on arrays too large for memory — lazy operator evaluation through a proxy class, fmap-style application, and marginal collapse. Portability work has steadily removed hard requirements, dropping the C++11 declaration and swapping OpenMP for TinyThreads to get parallelism on macOS.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued sanitizer-driven patches rather than new interfaces; the three-year gap before 0.2.2 suggests releases now arrive only when a crash or a CRAN check demands one.
Alternatives to fastplyr and filearray
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 fastplyr or filearray.
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 fastplyr alternatives → · See all filearray alternatives →
Recent activity from fastplyr and filearray
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2mo agofilearraySegfault on out-of-bound margins fixed
- 4mo agofastplyrNon-API C functions dropped, R 4.5.0 now required
- 8mo agofastplyrIn-place sorting arrives with a C++17 requirement
- 10mo agofastplyrGroup-unaware expressions evaluated on the whole frame
- 1y agofastplyrf_mutate and f_reframe complete the verb set
- 1y agofastplyrDynamic argument evaluation and f_pull
- 1y agofastplyrf_fill added and grouped joins repaired
- 3y agofilearrayLazy operator evaluation and macOS parallelism
- 3y agofilearraySequential read bug in fmap corrected
- 4y agofilearrayPartition limit removed by opening files on demand
- 4y agofilearrayHeader signatures and symbolic link detection
- 4y agofilearrayFlush timing left to the operating system
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between fastplyr and filearray?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. fastplyr and filearray 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 fastplyr better than filearray?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. fastplyr and filearray 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 fastplyr?
Top fastplyr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "fastplyr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/fastplyr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to filearray?
Top filearray alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "filearray alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/filearray-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.