[R] Tips for a longtime S-Plus user moving to R

[Kevin E. Thorpe]

Greetings.

I have been using S-Plus for many years now (>13) and have recently 
started to use R as well.  I have been interested in R for sometime, but 
until recently, have not been in a position to devote much time to it, 
but I digress.

Besides some of the more technical differences between R ans S-Plus 
described in the FAQ, there are other simple differences I have 
encountered.  For example, S-Plus has a function stdev() for calculating 
standard deviations while in R the corresponding function is sd(), which 
was easily found by looking at the help.  Another example, crosstabs() 
in S-Plus versus xtabs() in R.

I am also learning, thanks to this list, that R has many useful 
functions that S-Plus does not.  I recently learned of the subset() 
function which seems to replace constructions like df[df$x==something,].

I am very interested in learning about other "high level" differences 
between R and S-Plus like the examples above.  I have downloaded the 
excellent reference card created by Tom Short.  I have been scanning the 
lists of functions in the help system for the "standard" (base, stats, 
etc.) packages.  Both of these activities have been profitable.

Please share your experiences, tips, resources you have come across.  I 
will be pleased to summarise the responses to the list.

Kind Regards,

Kevin

-- 
Kevin E. Thorpe
Biostatistician/Trialist, Knowledge Translation Program
Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences
Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
email: kevin.thorpe at utoronto.ca  Tel: 416.946.8081  Fax: 416.971.2462