Paul

 

Just as in your implied analogy there are significant differences
beneath the surface between these programs despite superficial
similarities.

 

You will soon get frustrated trying to use both simultaneously as you
will not be sure that the critical step you've discovered in one will
work in the other. Most basic functions will work but I suspect that you
will soon discover some development or feature in the R pantheon that
will not translate readily to S-PLUS (and certainly not versions before
8.1).

 

The reasons for these differences are the result of fundamental
differences in architectures.

 

I used S-PLUS for 12 years, and I still need to use it occasionally the
most useful feature is the oft-despised Windows GUI. This is because it
provides a ready means to start to use a function that perhaps I only
use infrequently. However the GUI soon looses its appeal as I start to
solve a problem and almost immediately return to the scripting or
command line interface.

 

In R there are many useful starting points (help, apropos, views and a
simple search mechanism) that replace this comfortable feature, but
there is a learning curve to 'how do I find out how to find out in R'.
There are a range of helpful 'Starting R' books and they are worth the
effort of buying and reading.

 

Many companies, including the one I work for, offer support of all kinds
in R (as well as S-PLUS).

 

However the best help is the mechanism you have just used: an active and
mostly friendly R community. In addition there is a plethora of R
community groups, London, Chicago, New York come to mind - drop along to
some of them. And start to use R.

 

Regards

 

John James

Mango

 

----- Original Message -----

From: r-help-bounces@r-project.org <r-help-bounces@r-project.org>

To: r-help@r-project.org <r-help@r-project.org>

Sent: Thu Apr 22 20:00:13 2010

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

 

Hello Everyone,

 

My company purchased S-Plus before it was bought out by Tibco. My
understanding is that we own version 7.0 outright. 

 

So far, I've been learning in R but thought I might also try working in
S-Plus. My understanding is that S-Plus has some useful extra features.
Another potential benefit would be the ability to purchase technical
support, which I thought might help me to learn the S language.

 

I was just wondering if anyone could give me some advice about the
wisdom or folly of trying to use both products. For example, how well do
the two play together? If I learn to do something using a package in R,
is their some way to bring that into S-Plus? I've noticed that some R
packages, such as MASS and Hmisc are in S-Plus but are unsupported.
Others, such as reshape, appear not to be in the program but I thought
maybe they could be imported.

 

I know that R and S-Plus code are supposed to be very similar. I was
just wondering how similar. Yesterday, I ran some code from the MASS
package in S-Plus but the program didn't produce the graph I exepected
to see. I've been able to use windows() in R to correct this, but S-Plus
doesn't recognize that. So I was wondering how often code written in one
program would fail to work in the other.

 

Any insights you can offer will be most appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Paul 

 

 

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