[R] things that are difficult/impossible to do in SAS or SPSS but simple in R

[Daniel Nordlund]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf
> Of Jeffrey J. Hallman
> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 2:38 PM
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] things that are difficult/impossible to do in SAS or SPSS but simple in
> R
> 
> SAS has no facilities for date arithmetic and no easy way to build it
> yourself.  

This is simply not true.  SAS has all sorts of capabilities for doing arithmetic with dates, times and datetimes, including some very useful formats and functions for computing intervals.  The original poster asked for suggestions of things that were difficult/impossible to do in SAS or SPSS with the goal of getting SAS/SPSS users to consider R.  The only thing he would accomplish by making the above claim to that audience is a loss of credibility.

>In fact, that's the biggest problem with SAS: it stinks as a
> programming environment, so it's always much more difficult than it should be
> to do something new.  As soon as you get away from the canned procs and have
> to write something of your own, SAS falls down.
> 
> I don't know enough about SPSS to comment.
> --
> Jeff
> 

Dan

Daniel Nordlund
Bothell, WA  USA