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

[R. Michael Weylandt <michael.weylandt@gmail.com>]

On Nov 5, 2012, at 6:37 PM, Iurie Malai <iurie.malai at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

I'd think something like C/C++ -- the later includes the former ... mostly ... except where it doesn't. 

Michael

> 
> Regards,
> Iurie
> 
> 
> 2012/11/5 R. Michael Weylandt <michael.weylandt at gmail.com>
> 
>> 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)) 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
> 
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