R programming offers several features that make it unique and powerful. One major feature is vectorized computation, which allows operations on entire datasets without explicit loops.
R supports a wide range of statistical techniques, including regression, classification, clustering, and time‑series analysis.
Another advantage of R is its visualization capability. R can produce publication‑quality graphs, charts, and plots.
R is cross‑platform and runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is also free and open source.
- Seamless data handling and storage: One of the strongest features of R is that it enables users to handle data from various sizes and sources. R lets users handle small data which refers to data of size typically around one gigabyte. It enables user to read, store, and transform such data using readily available built-in features. Such features are available in the base R package but there are more advanced packages, such as the data.table package, which let users handle data of hundreds of gigabytes of size efficiently with minimal syntax. This is what makes R a very popular programming language as far as data handling is concerned.
- Fast operators for arrays: Another important feature of R is the availability of a fast operator on objects known as arrays. Arrays are parts of data that a user will extract for further analysis and visualisation. R has efficient in-built libraries that let a user perform these operations in a highly computation-efficient manner. One of the features built on top of the fast operations on array-like objects is called ‘vectorised computation’. Vectorised computation is essentially a style of programming that operates on several small pieces of data independently for the same purpose.
- High-quality graphics for display or print: One of the standout features of R, in addition to all the features mentioned above which are also available in other high-level programming languages such as Python, is its ability to produce high-quality graphics output. For any work that requires the communication of information via high-quality graphical output, R is the first choice.
- Traditional programming concepts – Conditionals, loops, user-defined functions, and input-output facilities: Besides all these high-level features, R also has traditional programming features such as conditionals, for-loops, if-statements, user-defined functions.