R is a programming language and environment created with the purpose of statistical computing and graphics. R is gaining popularity in recent years with big data and its useful features. R is not just a programming language it is an environment where useful tools, libraries provided in order to make statistic computing and creating graphics about them.
R Programming Language History
R programming language history starts on 1 April 1997. Here a list of important dates about R programming language and environment.
- The alpha version is announced with the release version 0.16 in 1997
- With the release version 0.60, the R becomes the official part of the GNU project in 1997
- The first stable version 1.0 is released in 2000
- 2.0 version released with lazy loading, for memory efficiency in 2004
- With 2.1 version UTF-8 and internationalization and localization support cames in 2005
- Windows 64 bit support with 2.11 version in 2010
- With 3.4 Just-in-time compilation (JIT) cames in 2017
R Programming Language Features
- R is an open-source project and free which is also a part of the GNU project
- R is cross-platform where it can be installed in different operating systems and versions like Windows, MacOS, Linux and both 32, 64 bit
- R provides a lot of different statistical techniques, libraries, functions, extensions with advanced graphical capabilities in order to present and model calculated data and statistics
- R provides a lot of useful features for statistical computation like scripts
- R has a bit community which is ready to provide help for different problems
- R has thousands of well-documented extensions which can be used for different porpuses
- Learning R programming is fun and easy for newcomers
R Development Tools
R is a programming language that provides different interfaces and development environments. R can be used from the command line as well as from the GUI named R Studio.
Install R Programming Language For Ubuntu, Debian, Mint
R programming language can be installed for different environments. In this part, we will install R base for the Ubuntu, Debian, Mint Linux distributions. The package is named r-base .
$ sudo apt-get install r-baseWe can print the installed R programming language and environment version with the --version option like below.
$ R --version
Create Simple R Application
R provides interactive programming and scripting environments where scripts and applications can be developed very fast. In this example, we will enter the interactive shell with the R command like below.
and then use followin script to create a variable named myVariable and set data Hello Poftut.com.
R Studio IDE
RStudio is an integrated development environment for R programming language. RStudio provides console,syntax-highlighting, direct code execution, plotting, history, debugging, and workspace management features. RStudio can be installed in operating systems like Windows, Linux, MacOS. There is two main RStudio versions Desktop and Server. Rstudio also provided as an Open source and Commercial where the Commercial version provides support and more features.