[R] will book on S plus help understanding R ?

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On Tue, 23 Mar 1999, Josef Bohart wrote:

> Was wondering if any body would know if the book "Programming with Data" 
a guide to S language could be used as a guide to working with the R language.
> Comments, suggestions, a book review is welcomed.

Can I try to be rather precise. John Chambers' 1998 book is about version 4
of the S language: one of its roles is the manual for that language. Sv4 is
not available outside a small group of people, but is the basis for S-PLUS
5.x.  Note though that S-PLUS 5.x differs in a number of ways from Sv4.

R is currently `not unlike' S version 3 and S-PLUS 3.x.  The ideas in
Chambers' book about programming design and new features are very valuable,
but I think the details will confuse anyone who is not using Sv4, possibly
including those using S-PLUS 5.x.

On the other hand, I think most books about S-PLUS 3.x would help
in understanding R.  One in particular has on-line material to assist its
use with R.


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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