Thanks all! At least for me, the manual text has a contradiction. If R is much like S, in other words it is a "diverged" S, as Michael says, it can't include itself as a component part.
Regards, Iurie 2012/11/5 R. Michael Weylandt <michael.weyla...@gmail.com> > On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 4:43 PM, Iurie Malai <iurie.ma...@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)) 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 > -- Iurie Malai +(373) 79288710 - Moldcell +(373) 67459710 - Unite [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@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.
