Generating directed Watts-Strogatz network

There are two limitations of Watts-Strogatz network generator in igraph package: (1) it works only for undirected graphs and (2) rewiring algorithm can produce loops or multiple edges.

You can use simplify function of such a graph, but then number of edges in the graph is reduced.
Below I give ws.graph function that generates directed graph without these problems:

library(igraph)
library(colorspace)

resample <- function(x, ...) {
    x[sample.int(length(x), ...)]
}

ws.graph <- function(n, nei, p) {
    stopifnot(nei < n)
    edge.list <- vector("list", n)
    for (v in 0:(n-1)) {
        edge.end <- union((v + 1:nei) %% n,
                          (v + (-1:-nei)) %% n)
        rewire <- (runif(length(edge.end)) < p)
        edge.end <- edge.end[!rewire]
        rewired <- resample(setdiff(0 : (n-1),
             c(edge.end, v)), sum(rewire))
        edges <- rep(v, 4 * nei)
        edges[c(F, T)] <- c(edge.end, rewired)
        edge.list[[v + 1]] <- edges
    }
    graph(unlist(edge.list))
}

n <- 8
nei <- 2
p.levels <- c(0, 0.25, 0.5, 1)
reps <- 2^16
m <- matrix(0, nrow = n, ncol = n)
m <- list(m, m, m, m)
for (i in 1:reps) {
    for (j in seq_along(p.levels)) {
        g <- ws.graph(n, nei, p.levels[j])
        m[[j]] <- m[[j]] + get.adjacency(g)
    }
}

x <- rep(1:n, n)
y <- rep(1:n, each = n)
par(mfrow = c(2, 2), mar= c(5, 5, 2, 2))
for (i in 1:4) {
    mc <- as.vector(m[[i]]) / reps
    mc <- cbind(mc, mc, mc)
    mc <- 1 - mc
    plot(x, y, col = hex(RGB(mc)),  pch = 19, ylab = "",
         xlab = paste("p =", round(p.levels[i], 4)), cex = 1.5)
}

This is the resulting plot:

As expected increasing rewiring probability to 1 makes edge probability distribution more uniform.