Manipulation of linear edits and error localization with the editrules package

This paper is the first of two papers describing the editrules package. The current paper is concerned with the treatment of numerical data under linear constraints, while the accompanying paper (Van der Loo and De Jonge, 2011) is concerned with constrained categorical and mixed data. The editrules package is designed to offer user-friendly interface for edit de_nition, manipulation and checking. The package offers functionality for error localization based on the paradigm of Fellegi and Holt and a flexible interface to binary programming based on the choice point paradigm. Lower-level functions include echelon transformation of linear systems, variable substitution and a fast Fourier-Motzkin elimination routine. We describe theory, implementation and give examples of package usage.