[R] cubic spline

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com>
>>>>>     on Sat, 1 Dec 2012 21:49:47 +0000 writes:

    > Martin Maechler <maechler <at> stat.math.ethz.ch> writes:
    > [snip]

    >> but definitely *no* need to use a function from an extra
    >> CRAN package .. as someone else ``erronously'' suggested.
    >> 
    >> Note that spline() and splinefun() together with approx()
    >> and approxfun() are among the several hundred functions
    >> that were already part of "pre-alpha" R, i.e., before R
    >> had a version number or *any* packages ...  and yes, the
    >> README then started with the two lines
    >> 
    >> | R Source Code (Tue Jun 20 14:33:47 NZST 1995) |
    >> Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995 by Robert Gentleman and Ross
    >> Ihaka
    >> 
    >> and it would be *really* *really* great if people did not
    >> add stuff to their packages that has been part of R for
    >> longer than they have even heard of R.
    >> 
    >> Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich

    >   To be fair, the 'fields' package has a pretty long
    > history too -- I think it may have been ported from an
    > S-PLUS 'package' (or whatever the correct terminology is)
    > that existed quite a while ago.

    >  I think it was the FUNFITS module. From
    > http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/S/:

    > funfits

    >     FUNFITS is a comprehensive S-Plus module for fitting
    > functions and nonlinear time series, including
    > multivariate splines, Kriging and neural networks.
    > Contributed by Doug Nychka (nychka at ucar.edu). [25/Apr/96]
    > [24/Mar/97][24/Sep/99] (3 kbytes). The actual compressed
    > tar file is available as funfits23.tar.gz in the S
    > collection. Access this file via FTP, or the WWW, but not
    > e-mail. (596k).  Older version avaulable at funfits.tar.Z

    >   A quick look at funfits.tar.Z suggests that 'splint'
    > existed in that version, in 1996 -- so respectably old.

Good point, Ben, thank you!

and of course Hans Borcher's one is even more relevant to the
original question.

Martin