Introduction

Frequently Asked Questions about S. $Revision: 1.24 $

This document contains answers to some of the most frequently asked questions in the S-news mailing list and sci.stat.math newsgroup about S and S-PLUS. They're all good questions, but they come up often enough that substantial net bandwidth can be saved by looking here first before asking.

MathSoft now has their own Web site which provides useful material which is kept more current than the information provided here. The URL for this site is http://www.mathsoft.com/. If you are using a Web browser, you may access this site by clicking here.

This list is currently available in ASCII, TeXInfo, and HTML versions. These are maintained by Charles Roosen <charles@playfair.stanford.edu> with the gracious assistance of Martin Maechler and many subscribers to the S-news mailing list.

• The ASCII version is archived as /S/faq on statlib. For information on accessing statlib, See section What is the statlib server? How can I access it?.
• The TeXInfo version is archived as /S/faq.texinfo on statlib.
• The HTML version (for WWW, i.e. "World Wide Web") is available using a Web browser such as Mosaic. The URL is http://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/S-FAQ.

The primary document is the TeXInfo file. The HTML version is automatically produced from the TeXInfo version using texi2html. The ASCII version is produced from the TeXInfo using makeinfo.

These documents are also available by anonymous ftp from ftp.stat.math.ethz.ch in directory /pub/Doc. Note that unless we develop a script to automatically update the files at statlib, the versions at ftp.stat.math.ethz.ch are more current than those at statlib.

If you have any suggested additions or corrections, please send them to Charles Roosen <charles@playfair.stanford.edu> with a subject line of the form S-faq Suggestion: [Insert Topic Here].

Special thanks to Rick Becker and Brian Ripley for their patience in looking over and making suggestions and corrections to the many attempts that led to this faq. Bill Dunlap and Pat Burns were kind enough to go through and suggest modifications. Thanks are also due to the members of the S-news newsgroup, too many to mention, who contributed suggestions and questions for this FAQ. Portions of this faq were shamelessly lifted from a similar document provided by Rick Becker and previous answers on this net.

Some general questions, though stated in terms of S only, are applicable to both S and S-PLUS.

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