[R] A general question: Is language S a component part of R?

William Dunlap wdunlap at tibco.com
Mon Nov 5 21:17:58 CET 2012


Almost all syntactically correct S code works in R and S+ the same as it did in S
(the last version of which came out c. 1999),  modulo bug fixes.   Off the top of
my head, I'd say the only things that were eliminated were the use of the underscore
as the assignment operator and the elimination of the keywords 'T' and 'F'.
R extends the language, e.g., to do lexical scoping, and S+ has stayed truer to S.
Hence I would say that the language interpreted by R is almost a superset of the
S language as it existed in 1999.

(I'm speaking of the language itself, not the packages build using the language.) 

Bill Dunlap
Spotfire, TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf
> Of Iurie Malai
> Sent: Monday, November 05, 2012 11:38 AM
> To: Patrick Burns
> Cc: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] A general question: Is language S a component part of R?
> 
> After reading the 'Inferno-ish R' the first thing that comes to mind is
> that R is very much like S, but it's still different (R is not S), so it
> can't contain the S as a programming language, as the manual says. Or I'm
> wrong?
> 
> 
> 2012/11/5 Patrick Burns <pburns at pburns.seanet.com>
> 
> > There is a bit of history in:
> >
> > http://www.portfolioprobe.com/**2012/05/31/inferno-ish-
> r/<http://www.portfolioprobe.com/2012/05/31/inferno-ish-r/>
> >
> > Pat
> >
> >
> >
> > On 05/11/2012 17:09, R. Michael Weylandt wrote:
> >
> >> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 4:43 PM, Iurie Malai <iurie.malai at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> In the "Introduction and preliminaries" the "An Introduction to R" manual
> >>> says about R: "... Among other things it has ... a well developed, simple
> >>> and effective programming language (Called 'S') ... ". Now I'm a little
> >>> confused. This means that language S is a component part of R? And S is
> >>> not
> >>> free? But R is free? Or the mentioned S is only "a free implementation"
> >>> of
> >>> the "true S"? Can anybody explain this? I want to know.
> >>>
> >>> Thank you!
> >>>
> >>>
> >> 'S' is a language, invented at Bell Labs
> >>
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**S_(programming_language)<http://en.wikipedia.org/wik
> i/S_(programming_language)>)
> >> which has two
> >> major implementations. S-Plus, which is a commercial product, and R,
> >> which you know well.
> >>
> >> R was originally quite like S/S-Plus, but it's changed over time and
> >> diverged aways and now I believe the R README says R is 'not unlike'
> >> S.
> >>
> >> Consider, e.g., Python, which is a language (specified in
> >> documentation) with multiple implementations: CPython, PyPy, Jython,
> >> IronPython, etc. If R and S-Plus had identical functionality they
> >> would be different concrete realizations of the abstract 'S' language,
> >> but they're more than slightly different in practice.
> >>
> >> Not sure if that helps at all....
> >>
> >> Michael
> >>
> >> ______________________________**________________
> >> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/**listinfo/r-
> help<https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help>
> >> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/**
> >> posting-guide.html <http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html>
> >> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >>
> >>
> > --
> > Patrick Burns
> > pburns at pburns.seanet.com
> > twitter: @portfolioprobe
> > http://www.portfolioprobe.com/**blog <http://www.portfolioprobe.com/blog>
> > http://www.burns-stat.com
> > (home of 'Some hints for the R beginner'
> > and 'The R Inferno')
> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Iurie Malai
> 
> +(373) 79288710 - Moldcell
> +(373) 67459710 - Unite
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.




More information about the R-help mailing list