# see https://www.dummies.com/programming/r/how-to-create-a-data-frame-from-scratch-in-r/
use Statistics::R;
my $R = Statistics::R->new();
my $out = $R->run(<<EOR);
employee <- c('John Doe','Peter Gynn','Jolie Hope')
salary <- c(21000, 23400, 26800)
startdate <- as.Date(c('2010-11-1','2008-3-25','2007-3-14'))
employ.data <- data.frame(employee, salary, startdate)
str(employ.data)
EOR
my $frame = $R->get('employ.data');
use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper($frame);
$VAR1 = [
          'employee',
          'salary',
          'startdate',
          '1',
          'John',
          'Doe',
          '21000',
          '2010-11-01',
          '2',
          'Peter',
          'Gynn',
          '23400',
          '2008-03-25',
          '3',
          'Jolie',
          'Hope',
          '26800',
          '2007-03-14'
        ];