Getting Started with delarr

What problem does delarr solve?

delarr lets you write matrix pipelines as if everything were already in memory while deferring the actual work until collect(). That matters when the source matrix lives on disk, when you want to avoid intermediate allocations, or when you need to stream the result directly into another backend.

This vignette covers one small lazy pipeline, one streaming write to HDF5, and one custom backend. For chunk planning, profiling, and optional shared-memory workers, see vignette("advanced", package = "delarr").

What does a lazy pipeline look like?

set.seed(1)
mat <- matrix(
  rnorm(24),
  nrow = 6,
  ncol = 4,
  dimnames = list(paste0("sample_", 1:6), paste0("feature_", 1:4))
)

lazy_mean <- delarr(mat) |>
  d_center(dim = "rows") |>
  d_map(~ .x * 0.5) |>
  d_reduce(mean, dim = "rows")

lazy_mean
#> <delarr> 6 x 1 - ops: center(rows) -> map -> reduce(rows)

Nothing has been materialized yet. The object is still a delarr, and the work is only a recorded plan.

row_summary <- collect(lazy_mean, chunk_size = 2L)
max(abs(row_summary))
#> [1] 4.163336e-17

After row-centering, every row has mean zero. The printed value is the largest absolute row mean after collection.

How do row and column vectors broadcast?

Scalars, row-sized vectors, and column-sized vectors stay lazy too. delarr infers whether a vector should broadcast across rows or columns from its length.

row_bias <- c(-1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4)
col_scale <- c(1, 0.5, 2, 1.5)

broadcasted <- collect((delarr(mat) + row_bias) * col_scale, chunk_size = 2L)
broadcasted[1:3, , drop = FALSE]
#>           feature_1  feature_2 feature_3  feature_4
#> sample_1 -1.6264538 -0.2562855 -3.242481 -0.2681682
#> sample_2  0.1836433  0.3691624 -4.429400  0.8908520
#> sample_3  0.1643714  0.7878907  4.249862  2.8784661

This length-based inference only works when the matrix is non-square, so that nrow and ncol are distinct. For a square n-by-n matrix a bare length-n vector is ambiguous — its length matches both dimensions — and delarr resolves the tie to row-aligned (one value per row, broadcast across the columns). This matches base R, where matrix + vector recycles the vector down the columns and so also aligns element i to row i. delarr emits a one-time warning at this point to flag the ambiguity:

sq <- matrix(1:9, 3, 3)
biased <- delarr(sq) + c(10, 20, 30)
#> Warning: Ambiguous broadcast: a length-3 vector against a square 3x3
#> matrix is interpreted as row-aligned (one value per row) ...
collect(biased)

If you actually want column alignment on a square matrix you cannot express it with a bare vector; pass an explicit conformable matrix instead:

collect(delarr(sq) + matrix(c(10, 20, 30), 3, 3, byrow = TRUE))

Silence the warning with options(delarr.warn_ambiguous_broadcast = FALSE) once you have confirmed the row-aligned default is what you intend.

How do you stream a result to HDF5?

delarr_hdf5() reads a dataset lazily, and hdf5_writer() lets you stream the transformed result back to disk without materializing the full output matrix in R. The HDF5 backend is optional: install the hdf5r package to enable it. The code below runs only when hdf5r is available.

X <- delarr_hdf5(tf_in, "X")
writer <- hdf5_writer(tf_out, "X_z", ncol = ncol(X), chunk = c(5L, 3L))

collect(X |> d_zscore(dim = "cols"), into = writer, chunk_size = 3L)

z <- read_hdf5(tf_out, "X_z")
rbind(
  mean = round(colMeans(z), 6),
  sd = round(apply(z, 2L, stats::sd), 6)
)
#>      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6]
#> mean    0    0    0    0    0    0
#> sd      1    1    1    1    1    1

How do you wrap your own storage layer?

A custom backend only needs matrix dimensions and a pull() function that can return arbitrary row and column slices. Here the backing store is just another matrix, but the same pattern works for databases, APIs, or memory-mapped files.

custom <- delarr_backend(
  nrow = nrow(source_mat),
  ncol = ncol(source_mat),
  pull = function(rows = NULL, cols = NULL) {
    if (is.null(rows)) rows <- seq_len(nrow(source_mat))
    if (is.null(cols)) cols <- seq_len(ncol(source_mat))
    source_mat[rows, cols, drop = FALSE]
  },
  dimnames = dimnames(source_mat)
)

custom_result <- custom[1:4, 2:5] |>
  d_map(~ .x^2) |>
  collect(chunk_size = 2L)

custom_result
#>       col_2 col_3 col_4 col_5
#> row_1   121   441   961  1681
#> row_2   144   484  1024  1764
#> row_3   169   529  1089  1849
#> row_4   196   576  1156  1936

Where should you go next?

Use collect() when you want to control chunk size or stream into a writer, delarr_backend() when you need a custom backend, and vignette("advanced", package = "delarr") for execution plans, streamed multi-reducer summaries, block-wise workflows, delayed matrix products, and optional shared-memory workers.