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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Languages
  4. Languages
  5. Perl vs R Language

Perl vs R Language

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Perl
Perl
Stacks4.3K
Followers935
Votes575
GitHub Stars2.2K
Forks602
R Language
R Language
Stacks3.9K
Followers1.9K
Votes418

R Language vs Perl: What are the differences?

Developers describe R Language as "A language and environment for statistical computing and graphics". 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. On the other hand, Perl is detailed as "Highly capable, feature-rich programming language with over 26 years of development". Perl is a general-purpose programming language originally developed for text manipulation and now used for a wide range of tasks including system administration, web development, network programming, GUI development, and more.

R Language and Perl can be categorized as "Languages" tools.

"Data analysis " is the top reason why over 65 developers like R Language, while over 64 developers mention "Lots of libraries" as the leading cause for choosing Perl.

Perl is an open source tool with 707 GitHub stars and 208 GitHub forks. Here's a link to Perl's open source repository on GitHub.

According to the StackShare community, Perl has a broader approval, being mentioned in 785 company stacks & 487 developers stacks; compared to R Language, which is listed in 357 company stacks and 804 developer stacks.

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Detailed Comparison

Perl
Perl
R Language
R Language

Perl is a general-purpose programming language originally developed for text manipulation and now used for a wide range of tasks including system administration, web development, network programming, GUI development, and more.

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.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
2.2K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
602
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
4.3K
Stacks
3.9K
Followers
935
Followers
1.9K
Votes
575
Votes
418
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 72
    Lots of libraries
  • 66
    Open source
  • 61
    Text processing
  • 54
    Powerful
  • 49
    Unix-style
Cons
  • 4
    Messy $/@/% syntax
  • 3
    No exception handling
  • 2
    "1;"
  • 2
    No OS threads
  • 2
    Bad OO support
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

What are some alternatives to Perl, R Language?

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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