R : What You Need to Know to Get Started
Peter McQuire, Alfred Kume · 2023
This chapter introduces the fundamentals of the R programming language. R is an open-source language which one can use without purchasing a licence, and contribute to solving problems within the vast R community. The chapter examines how to start using the R/RStudio package for basic tasks. RStudio provides an excellent user interface for R which considerably improves the user's experience compared to using R directly. In the R programming environment there are four main types of data structures: vectors, matrices, dataframes, and lists. Vectors can be of four types: numeric, logical, character, and factor. A package is a collection of functions and data which have a common theme developed by R users. A script file is a plain text file that contains R commands. Script files usually have the extension .r or .R.