fastcluster: Fast hierarchical clustering routines for R and Python

Copyright © 2011 Daniel Müllner
<http://math.stanford.edu/~muellner>


Version history
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Version 1.0.0, 03/14/2011:

  • Initial release, dependent on Rcpp. Not available on CRAN.

Version 1.0.1, 03/15/2011:

  • Removed the dependence on Rcpp; only R's original C interface is used.

Version 1.0.2, 03/17/2011:

  • File DESCRIPTION: Fixed a typo

Version 1.0.3, 03/20/2011:

  • File README: Removed the warning about false results from the flashClust
    package since the new flashClust version 1.01 has this error corrected.

  • Cleaned the test file fastcluster_test.R up. (No dependence on the MASS
    package any more)

Version 1.0.4, 03/21/2011:

  • Changed the name of the external function from the outdated "Rcpp_linkage"
    to "fastcluster".

  • Registered the external function "fastcluster" in R.

  • Configured the C header inclusions to work on Fedora (thanks to Peter
    Langfelder).

Version 1.1.0, 08/21/2011

  • Routines for clustering vector data.

  • Added a User's manual

  • Revision of all files

Version 1.1.1, 10/08/2011

  • Fixed test scripts, which indicated an error on some architectures, even
    if results were correct. (The assumption was that ties in single linkage
    clustering are resolved in the same way, both for dissimilarity input and
    for vector input. This is not necessarily true if the floating point unit
    uses "excess precision". Now the test scripts are content with arbitrary
    resolution of ties and do not assume a specific scheme.)

  • Bug fix: uninitialized function pointer in Version 1.1.0

Version 1.1.2, 10/11/2011

  • Fix for Solaris: replaced ssize_t by ptrdiff_t in the C++ code.

  • Removed the NN-chain algorithm for vector input: it was not clear that
    it would work under all circumstances with the intricacies of floating-
    point arithmetic. Especially the effects of the excess precision on the
    x87 are impossible to control in a portable way. Now, the memory-saving
    routines for the “Ward” linkage use the generic algorithm, as “centroid”
    and “median” linkage do.

Version 1.1.3, 12/10/2011

  • Replaced ptrdiff_t by std::ptrdiff_t, as GCC 4.6.1 complains about this.

Version 1.1.4, 02/01/2012

  • Release the GIL in the Python package, so that it can be used efficiently
    in multithreaded applications.

  • Improved performance for the "Ward" method with vector input.

  • The "members" parameter in the R interface is now treated as a double
    array, not an integer array as before. This was a slight incompatibility
    with the stats::hclust function. Thanks to Matthias Studer, University of
    Geneva, for pointing this out.

Version 1.1.5, 02/14/2012

  • Updated the "members" specification in the User's manual to reflect the
    recent change.
