| S | |
|---|---|
| Paradigm | Multi-paradigm:imperative,object oriented |
| Developer | Rick Becker, Allan Wilks,John Chambers,William S. Cleveland,Trevor Hastie |
| First appeared | 1976; 49 years ago (1976) |
| Typing discipline | dynamic,strong |
| License | depends on implementation |
| Website | ect.bell-labs.com/sl/S/ at theWayback Machine (archived 2018-10-14) |
| Majorimplementations | |
| S-PLUS | |
| Influenced by | |
| C,APL,PPL,Fortran | |
| Influenced | |
| R | |
S[1] is a statisticalprogramming language developed primarily byJohn Chambers and (in earlier versions) Rick Becker,Trevor Hastie,William Cleveland and Allan Wilks ofBell Laboratories. The aim of the language, as expressed by John Chambers, is "to turn ideas into software, quickly and faithfully".[1] It was formerly widely used by academic researchers.,[2] but has now been superseded by the partiallybackwards compatible[3]R language, a part of theGNU free software project.[4]S-PLUS was a widely used commercial implementation of S that was formerly sold byTIBCO Software.
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 callingFortran subroutines; however, S was designed to offer an alternate and more interactive approach, motivated in part byexploratory data analysis advocated byJohn Tukey.[5] Early design decisions that hold even today include interactive graphics devices (printers and character terminals at the time), and providing easily accessible documentation for the functions.[citation needed]
Development of the project was led byJohn Chambers andTrevor Hastie, and included developers Richard Becker, Allan Wilks,John Chambers, andWilliam Cleveland,[6] all of whom were then employees ofAT&T.[7] Out of the developers who contributed to S, Chambers is generally agreed to be the most significant contributor.[4] Chambers received the Software System Award from theAssociation for Computing Machinery for his work on S.[8]
The first working version of S was built in 1976, and ran on theGCOS operating system. At this time, S was unnamed; naming suggestions includedISCS (Interactive SCS),SCS (Statistical Computing System), andSAS (Statistical Analysis System) (which was already taken: seeSAS System). The name 'S' (used with single quotation marks until 1979) was chosen, as it was a common letter in the suggestions and consistent with other programming languages designed from the same institution at the time (namely theC programming language).[5] It stands for the word "statistics".[9]
WhenUNIX/32V was ported to the (then new) 32-bitDECVAX, computing on theUnix platform became feasible for S. In late 1979, S2 was ported from GCOS to UNIX, which would become the new primary platform.[10]
In 1980 the first version of S was distributed outside Bell Laboratories and in 1981 source versions were made available.[5] S was distributed freely in academic circles, and became popular among academic statisticians.[11] The research team at Bell Laboratories published two books in 1984:S: An Interactive Environment for Data Analysis and Graphics[12] (known as the 'Brown Book') andExtending the S System.[13] Also, in 1984 the source code for S became licensed through AT&T Software Sales for education and commercial purposes.
The first version ofS-PLUS was released by Statistical Sciences, Inc. in 1988. S-PLUS was later sold toTIBCO Software.[9] By this time, many changes were made to S and the syntax of the language with the release of S3.[10]The New S Language[14] (known as the 'Blue Book') was published to introduce the new features, such as the transition frommacros tofunctions and how functions can be passed to other functions (such asapply). Many other changes to the S language were to extend the concept of "objects", and to make the syntax more consistent (and strict). However, many users found the transition toNew S difficult, since their macros needed to be rewritten. Many other changes to S took hold, such as the use ofX11 andPostScript graphics devices, rewriting many internal functions from Fortran to C, and the use ofdouble precision (only) arithmetic. TheNew S language is very similar to that used in modern versions ofS-PLUS andR.
The graphical user interface of S was also updated interactive graphical features after integration withAxum.[9]
Statistical Models in S[15] (known as the 'White Book') was published in 1991, introducing Wilkinson-Rogers formula notation[16] (using the~ operator) for defining statistical models, data frame objects, and modifications to the use of objectmethods andclasses.
The latest version of the S standard is S4, released in 1998.[17] It provides advanced object-oriented features. S4 classes differ markedly from S3 classes; S4 formally defines the representation and inheritance for each class, and hasmultiple dispatch: the generic function can be dispatched to a method based on the class of any number of arguments, not just one.[18]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)| International | |
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| National | |
| Other | |
