R: The R Project for Statistical Computing

R is a free software environment for statistical computing andgraphics.

News

The idea of naming R version releases was inspired by the naming system for Debian and Ubuntu versions. The latter is a system like the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS), with formal classes (also derived from S) and generic methods, which supports multiple dispatch and multiple inheritance The former, being more informal, supports single dispatch on the first argument, and objects are assigned to a class simply by setting a “class” attribute in each object. In R, almost all functions and all user-defined functions are closures. Objects created within the body of the function (which are enclosed by curly brackets) remain accessible only from within the function, and any data type may be returned.

• The language was inspired by the S programming language, with most S programs able to run unaltered in R.
• The name of the language, R, comes from being both an S language successor and the shared first letter of the authors, Ross and Robert.
• R is a programming language for statistical computing and data visualization.
• In 2018, core R developer Peter Dalgaard presented a history of R releases since 1997.

Structure of a function

Its core is an interpreted language with a native command line interface. Build and share incredible data science products in R and Python with our solution for end-to-end enterprise data science. For data science teams, run your IDE in a browser connected to an open source or professional server. Statistical frameworks that use R in the background include Jamovi and JASP.citation needed Dalgaard noted an additional reason for the use of Peanuts references in R codenames—the humorous observation that “everyone in statistics is a P-nut.” In 2018, core R developer Peter Dalgaard presented a history of R releases since 1997.

Immediately available when starting R after installation, base packages provide the fundamental and necessary syntax and commands for programming, computing, graphics production, basic arithmetic, and statistical functionality. R packages are collections of functions, documentation, and data that expand R. The core R language is extended by a large number of software packages, which contain reusable code, documentation, and sample data. The Bioconductor project provides packages for genomic data analysis, complementary DNA, microarray, and high-throughput sequencing methods. To load the functions, data, and documentation of a package, one calls the library() function.

This operator allows users to chain functions together, rather than using nested function calls. R can create functions that add new functionality and enable code reuse. An example is the tidyverse collection of R packages, which bundles several subsidiary packages to provide a common API. It has been widely adopted in the fields of data mining, bioinformatics, data analysis, and data science. It includes a console, syntax-highlighting editor that supports direct code execution.

R (programming language)

The following examples illustrate the basic syntax of the language and use of the command-line interface.c As of 30 June 2025update, it has 90 mirrors and 22,390 contributed packages. CRAN originally had only three mirror sites and twelve contributed packages. In August 1993, Ihaka and Gentleman posted a binary file of R on StatLib — a data archive website. The r777 language was inspired by the S programming language, with most S programs able to run unaltered in R. R was started by professors Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman as a programming language to teach introductory statistics at the University of Auckland.