S (Programming Language)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. S is a statistical programming language developed primarily by John Chambers and (in earlier versions) Rick Becker and Allan Wilks of Bell Laboratories. The aim of the language, as expressed by John Chambers, is "to turn ideas into software, quickly and faithfully." The two modern implementations of S are R and S-PLUS. S is one of several statistical computing languages that were designed at Bell Laboratories, and first took form between 1975-1976. Up to that time, much of the statistical computing was done by directly calling Fortran subroutines; however, S was designed to offer an alternate and more interactive approach. Early design decisions that hold even today include interactive graphics devices, and providing easily accessible documentation for the functions.