title: Converting R code to C code
body: <p>I'm looking into converting an R script into C-code for speed reasons and for the ability to have it packaged as an .exe. I'm new to C. </p>
  
  <p>My question is will it be significantly faster in C? The rate limiting step is a sort algorithm that has to be applied a lot of times to big vectors. I'm not sure if the vectorized functionality in R will help this or slow it down. Also I've read that for-loops are inefficient in R.</p>
  
  <p>If I should do this in C, what libraries might help me mimic some of the data-processing functions of R like basic matrix manipulations? Where should I look to get started? Right now I don't even know how to read my data into C (comma delimited text file). </p>