[R] R and S-Plus: Two programs separated by a common language?

[Mike Prager]

On Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:00:13 -0700 (PDT), Paul Miller
<pjmiller_57 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>I was just wondering if anyone could give me some advice about the wisdom or folly of trying to use both [R and S-Plus].

I suspect that trying to use both will give you heartburn. When I
switched from S-Plus to R, the most significant differences (for my
purposes) were in graphics. The languages differ in the way they
approach graphics, and even where the languages appear the same,
interpretation of some parameters (such as cex) can be different. 

Also, the way data are stored differs considerably. Because S-Plus
stores data on disk, while R keeps data in memory, S-Plus can have an
edge when analyzing huge data sets. (That reflects my understanding of
the situation about 5 or 6 yr ago.) 

I have gone back to old projects and tried to execute my S-Plus code
in R. In general, the code needed minor to major massaging to make
that happen, especially when the output was carefully annotated
graphs.

I would recommend that you concentrate on R, where much active
development is taking place.  Support from this newsgroup is better
than support from most commercial vendors, though perhaps not always
as sweet-natured.  As noted by others, Revolution R is available with
commercial support, if you need it.