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R (programming language)

R is a programming language for statistical computing and data visualization. It has been adopted in the fields of data mining, bioinformatics, and data analysis.[8]

The core R language is augmented by a large number of extension packages, containing reusable code, documentation, and sample data.


R software is open-source and free software. It is licensed by the GNU Project and available under the GNU General Public License.[3] It is written primarily in C, Fortran, and R itself. Precompiled executables are provided for various operating systems.


As an interpreted language, R has a native command line interface. Moreover, multiple third-party graphical user interfaces are available, such as RStudio—an integrated development environment—and Jupyter—a notebook interface.

The R Core Team was founded in 1997 to maintain the R source code. The R Foundation for Statistical Computing was founded in April 2003 to provide financial support. The R Consortium is a Linux Foundation project to develop R infrastructure.


The R Journal is an open access, academic journal which features short to medium-length articles on the use and development of R. It includes articles on packages, programming tips, CRAN news, and foundation news.


The R community hosts many conferences and in-person meetups. These groups include:

Although R is an open-source project, some companies provide commercial support:

Comparison of numerical-analysis software

Comparison of statistical packages

List of numerical-analysis software

List of statistical software

Rmetrics