Is R an interpreted or compiled programming language?

Question

Is R an interpreted or compiled programming language?

Solution 1

The R FAQ says: "The core of R is an interpreted computer language".

Solution 2

It's more accurate to say that the default implementation of some language is interpreted or compiled. But not the language itself!

Solution 3

R is an interpreted language.

Solution 4

You can build a compiler or interpreter for any programming language. In general, the language itself is not compiled or interpreted.

So, R could be either interpreted or compiled. Nonetheless, in the most common implementation, R is interpreted.

Solution 5

R doesn't compile. There are projects that try to get it compiled: http://www.hipersoft.rice.edu/rcc/ , http://www.rforge.net/r2c/ but I can't find any currently supported.

That said, the performance on modern hardware seems reasonable for even larger workloads I have thrown at it (millions of records).

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Comments

[Shane]

Those aren't ready yet. See this related question: stackoverflow.com/questions/1452235/…

[John D. Cook]

The folks at Revolution Computing (revolution-computing.com) are working on a version of R that's supposedly a few times faster than the standard distribution. It's still interpreted, though.

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

John, REvo R is still essentially the same R but it ships with MKL (faster blas) and (somewhat) easier parallel usage. The engine is identical for all intents and purposes.