Installing R

R can be installed in every operating system. It is highly recommended to download the program directly from http://cran.rstudio.com/ when working on Windows or Mac OS. On Ubuntu, R can be easily installed from the terminal as follows:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install r-base
sudo apt-get install r-base-dev

The installation of r-base-dev is highly recommended as it is a package that enables users to compile the R packages from source, that is, maintain the packages or install additional R packages directly from the R console using the install.packages() command.

To install R on other UNIX-based operating systems, visit the following links:

A quick guide to R

When working on Windows, R can be launched via its application. After the installation, it is available as any other program on Windows. When opening the program, a window like this will appear:

When working on Linux, you can access the R console directly by typing R on the command line:

In both the cases, R executes in runtime. This means that you can type in code, press Enter, and the result will be given immediately as follows:

> 2+2
[1] 4

The R application in any operating system does not provide an easy environment to develop code. For this reason, it is highly recommended (not only to write web applications in R with Shiny, but for any task you want to perform in R) to use an Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

The topics related to the R language are covered mainly in Chapter 2, First Steps towards Programming in R, and Chapter 3, An Introduction to Data Processing in R.