<- Back to index

Basic syntax and gotchas

Helping yourself

The R interpreter's built-in help feature is the only place I can consistently find documentation on anything. Try: ?function_name or ??search_term.

Because even R's name is stupid, it's really hard to google R things in a useful way. There is a tool called RSeek that pretends to help but it just returns different useless results. Sorry. Welcome to R! Your life is now hell.

The Hyperpolyglot page comparing MATLAB, R, and NumPy syntax is helpful. John D. Cook's R programming for those coming from other languages page is brief but useful. The R inferno offers complementary advice but blames the victim.

R messiah Hadley Wickham has a very useful wiki-book on advanced R development. The vocabulary appendix is an excellent list of things to learn.

Stack Overflow and the R-Help mailing list are good places to ask for help. There is offputtingly dense advice on asking good questions.

<- Back to index