Use Gemini for Code Conversion

Contributed by: Thomas Nield

Difficulty level: Intermediate

Here is a useful task for which LLMs like Google Gemini can be of assistance. Let’s say you inherited several R scripts in your workplace and you want to convert them to Python. With a little bit of prompting, you can save yourself some time and get your R code turned into Python code.

Let’s start simple. I have the following basic R code to declare and print a vector. I want to turn it into Python code.

s <- c('apple','red',5,TRUE) 

print(s)

I can prompt Google Gemini to convert it to Python as follows (note that I am pasting the code into a triple-ticks (```) block):

Prompt: Can you convert this R code into Python code?

```s <- c('apple','red',5,TRUE) print(s)```

Gemini: Sure, here is the Python code that converts the R code s <- c(‘apple’,‘red’,5,TRUE):

s = ['apple', 'red', 5, True]
print(s)

The Python code is equivalent to the R code in terms of functionality. It creates a list called s that contains the elements 'apple', 'red', 5, and True. Then, it prints the contents of the list s.

This is a great start, but let’s say I wanted to use pandas rather than a plain Python list. I can continue to prompt and ask for this change:

Prompt: Awesome, can you use pandas to do that task?

Gemini: Sure, here is the Python code that uses pandas to do the same task:

import pandas as pd

s = pd.Series(['apple', 'red', 5, True])
print(s)

The Python code first imports the pandas library. Then, ...