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  5. GNU Bash vs R

GNU Bash vs R

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

R Language
R Language
Stacks3.9K
Followers1.9K
Votes418
GNU Bash
GNU Bash
Stacks1.4K
Followers723
Votes8

GNU Bash vs R: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this Markdown code, I will provide the key differences between GNU Bash and R, focusing on specific differences that can be described in short paragraphs. I will format everything in Markdown code that can be used in a website.

  1. Speed: GNU Bash is primarily designed as a shell scripting language for automating tasks and running commands in a terminal. It is optimized for efficient execution of command-line operations. On the other hand, R is a programming language specifically developed for statistical computing and graphics. While R is capable of performing various data analysis tasks, it may not be as fast as GNU Bash in executing system-level operations due to its focus on statistical computations.

  2. Syntax and Purpose: GNU Bash is primarily used for writing shell scripts, which can automate tasks by running a series of commands. It uses a scripting syntax and is suited for managing files, running programs, and automating system administration tasks. In contrast, R is a programming language designed for statistical analysis and data manipulation. It has a different syntax and is specifically designed for working with data, performing statistical calculations, and creating visualizations.

  3. Built-in Functions: GNU Bash provides a rich set of built-in functions and utilities for text manipulation, file handling, and system operations. It offers various commands to interact with files, directories, and processes. R, on the other hand, focuses more on statistical analysis and provides a comprehensive set of functions and packages specifically designed for data manipulation, statistical modeling, and visualization. It offers a wide range of functions for data analysis, regression analysis, hypothesis testing, and more.

  4. Package Ecosystem: R has a vast ecosystem of packages contributed by the community, which extends the functionality of the language. These packages cover a wide range of domains, including machine learning, data visualization, finance, and biology. GNU Bash, being primarily a shell scripting language, does not have a package ecosystem as extensive as R. While it has various utilities and libraries available, it does not provide the same level of specialized packages for specific domains.

  5. Interactivity: When working with GNU Bash, interactions with the shell are mostly through commands and scripts executed in a non-interactive manner. It is commonly used for running scripts in batch mode or performing system administration tasks. R, on the other hand, provides an interactive environment where users can execute commands and see immediate results. This interactivity allows for exploratory data analysis and iterative development of code.

  6. Data Manipulation and Analysis: R provides powerful tools for data manipulation and analysis, including techniques for cleaning, transforming, and aggregating data. It offers functionalities for handling missing values, merging datasets, and reshaping data structures. GNU Bash, while capable of performing basic text manipulation and file handling operations, does not provide the same level of data manipulation and analysis capabilities as R.

In summary, the key differences between GNU Bash and R include speed, syntax and purpose, built-in functions, package ecosystem, interactivity, and data manipulation and analysis capabilities.

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Advice on R Language, GNU Bash

Justin
Justin

Open Source Program Manager at Reblaze

Aug 15, 2019

Review

If you have a file (demo.txt) that has 3 columns:

Column-1    Column-2    Column-3
Row-1a      Row-2a      Row-3a         
Row-1b      Row-2b      Row-3b
Row-1c      Row-2c      Row-3c
Row-1d      Row-2d      Row-3d
Row-1e      Row-2e      Row-3e

and you want to only view the first column of the file in your CLI, run the following:

awk {'print $1'} demo.txt

Column-1
Row-1a
Row-1b
Row-1c
Row-1d
Row-1e

If you want to print the second column of demo.txt, just replace $1 with $2

96.4k views96.4k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

R Language
R Language
GNU Bash
GNU Bash

R provides a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinear modelling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, ...) and graphical techniques, and is highly extensible.

The Bourne Again SHell is an sh-compatible shell that incorporates useful features from the Korn shell (ksh) and C shell (csh). It is intended to conform to the IEEE POSIX P1003.2/ISO 9945.2 Shell and Tools standard.

-
Command line editing; Unlimited size command history; Job Control; Shell Functions and Aliases; Indexed arrays of unlimited size; Integer arithmetic in any base from two to sixty-four
Statistics
Stacks
3.9K
Stacks
1.4K
Followers
1.9K
Followers
723
Votes
418
Votes
8
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 86
    Data analysis
  • 64
    Graphics and data visualization
  • 55
    Free
  • 45
    Great community
  • 38
    Flexible statistical analysis toolkit
Cons
  • 6
    Very messy syntax
  • 4
    Tables must fit in RAM
  • 3
    Arrays indices start with 1
  • 2
    No push command for vectors/lists
  • 2
    Messy syntax for string concatenation
Pros
  • 3
    Powerful scripting language
  • 3
    Customizable
  • 2
    Widely adopted
  • 0
    Cross platform
Cons
  • 1
    Too Slow
Integrations
No integrations available
Codecov
Codecov

What are some alternatives to R Language, GNU Bash?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

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