R is an open-source programming language that is widely used as a

statistical software and data analysis tool. R generally comes with the
Command-line interface. R is available across widely used platforms like
Windows, Linux, and macOS. Also, the R programming language is the
latest cutting-edge tool.
It was designed by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of
Auckland, New Zealand, and is currently developed by the R Development
Core Team. R programming language is an implementation of the S
programming language. It also combines with lexical scoping semantics
inspired by Scheme. Moreover, the project conceives in 1992, with an initial
version released in 1995 and a stable beta version in 2000.
Why R Programming Language?
 

 R programming is used as a leading tool for machine learning, statistics,

and data analysis. Objects, functions, and packages can easily be
created by R.
 It’s a platform-independent language. This means it can be applied to all
operating system.
 It’s an open-source free language. That means anyone can install it in any
organization without purchasing a license.
 R programming language is not only a statistic package but also allows us
to integrate with other languages (C, C++). Thus, you can easily interact
with many data sources and statistical packages.
  The R programming language has a vast community of users and it’s
growing day by day.
 R is currently one of the most requested programming languages in the
Data Science job market that makes it the hottest trend nowadays.
Features of R Programming Language
Statistical Features of R: 
 Basic Statistics: The most common basic statistics terms are the mean,
mode, and median. These are all known as “Measures of Central
Tendency.” So using the R language we can measure central tendency
very easily.
 Static graphics: R is rich with facilities for creating and developing
interesting static graphics. R contains functionality for many plot types
including graphic maps, mosaic plots, biplots, and the list goes on.
 Probability distributions: Probability distributions play a vital role in
statistics and by using R we can easily handle various types of probability
distribution such as Binomial Distribution, Normal Distribution, Chi-
squared Distribution and many more.
 Data analysis: It provides a large, coherent and integrated collection of
tools for data analysis.
Programming Features of R:  
 R Packages: One of the major features of R is it has a wide availability of
libraries. R has CRAN(Comprehensive R Archive Network), which is a
repository holding more than 10, 0000 packages.
 Distributed Computing: Distributed computing is a model in which
components of a software system are shared among multiple computers
to improve efficiency and performance. Two new packages ddR and
multidplyr used for distributed programming in R were released in
November 2015.
Programming in R:
Since R is much similar to other widely used languages syntactically, it is
easier to code and learn in R. Programs can be written in R in any of the
widely used IDE like R Studio, Rattle, Tinn-R, etc. After writing the program
save the file with the extension .r. To run the program use the following
command on the command line:  
R file_name.r
Example: 
 R

# R program to print Welcome to GFG!

 
 # Below line will print "Welcome to GFG!"

cat("Welcome to GFG!")

Output: 
Welcome to GFG!
Advantages of R:  
 R is the most comprehensive statistical analysis package. As new
technology and concepts often appear first in R.
 As R programming language is an open source. Thus, you can run R
anywhere and at any time.
 R programming language is suitable for GNU/Linux and Windows
operating system.
 R programming is cross-platform which runs on any operating system.
 In R, everyone is welcome to provide new packages, bug fixes, and code
enhancements.
Disadvantages of R:  
 In the R programming language, the standard of some packages is less
than perfect.
 Although, R commands give little pressure to memory management. So R
programming language may consume all available memory.
 In R basically, nobody to complain if something doesn’t work.
 R programming language is much slower than other programming
languages such as Python and MATLAB.
Applications of R:  
 We use R for Data Science. It gives us a broad variety of libraries related
to statistics. It also provides the environment for statistical computing and
design.
 R is used by many quantitative analysts as its programming tool. Thus, it
helps in data importing and cleaning.
 R is the most prevalent language. So many data analysts and research
programmers use it. Hence, it is used as a fundamental tool for finance.
 Tech giants like Google, Facebook, bing, Twitter, Accenture, Wipro and
many more using R nowadays.
R and Python both play a major role in data science. It becomes confusing
for any newbie to choose the better or the most suitable one among the two,
R and Python. So take a look at R vs Python for Data Science to choose
which language is more suitable for data science.