R (programming language)

R
Terminal window for R
ParadigmsMulti-paradigm: procedural, object-oriented, functional, reflective, imperative, array
Designed byRoss Ihaka and Robert Gentleman
DeveloperR Core Team
First appearedAugust 1993 (1993-08)
Stable release
4.5.1  / 13 June 2025 (13 June 2025)
Typing disciplineDynamic
Platformarm64 and x86-64
LicenseGPL-2.0-or-later
Filename extensions
  • .r
  • .rdata
  • .rhistory
  • .rds
  • .rda
Websiter-project.org
Influenced by
Influenced
Julia pandas

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

The core R language is extended by a large number of software packages, which contain reusable code, documentation, and sample data. Some of the most popular R packages are in the tidyverse collection, which enhances functionality for visualizing, transforming, and modelling data, as well as improves the ease of programming (according to the authors and users).

R is free and open-source software distributed under the GNU General Public License. The language is implemented primarily in C, Fortran, and R itself. Precompiled executables are available for the major operating systems (including Linux, MacOS, and Microsoft Windows).

Its core is an interpreted language with a native command line interface. In addition, multiple third-party applications are available as graphical user interfaces; such applications include RStudio (an integrated development environment) and Jupyter (a notebook interface).