R Programming and Development. From Basics to Advanced Topics

R is one of the most widely used computer languages for data analysis. The aim of "R Programming and Development" is to explore the basics of R in order to improve understanding of these basics and the practice of using R. The issues addressed have been selected with the aim to be useful in a wide range of applications with R. Novices in R will be able to find their way relatively easily in these pages because the concepts are explained from their basics. Chapter 1 is an introduction with a brief overview on the importance of open source software in data analysis and on user interfaces. Chapters 2-5 treat subjects likely to interest a wide range of users and programmers: data structure and manipulation, programming functions, and some specific data types such as character strings, dates, and times. Chapters 6 on debugging and 7 on code optimisation are for programmers and developers who want to improve their work. Chapter 8 tackles an important topic: interfacing R and C using the tools available in a default installation of R. Chapter 9 is an overview of using R with high-performance computing hardware. Chapters 2-9 end with exercises that invite the reader to further explore the issues exposed there.