[R] R or Splus?

[J.Brainard@uea.ac.uk]

It's been suggested I use R, I suppose because my employer is too skint to pay 
for a copy of Splus.

But.... it doesn't seem to be stable.  I was trying to do some ordinary regression
and stepping through a model.  I was trying to set up a model ('kitchen_sink') in
which to put all my model parameters.  Then I wanted to use step() to see what it
would reduce the model to.  I couldn't even get started though.  I would specify 
the same model again and again, with just a few of the possible variables, and
sometimes lm() would fall over and return an error message, sometimes the regression
ran fine.  I got fed up and ftp'd the original tables up to a machine running
Splus, where the models ran fine, every time, with all kinds of specifications.

Is this a normal experience?  Is R buggy or what?  I note the other email that
R can't handle files named x.  If I can use Splus, should I just do that?

(Alternative is graphics-interface-only SPSS, and given that I've never used it,
I'm working on remote machines, from home, with no manuals handy, that is something I 
should really wish to avoid :-).

-julii
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._