If you intend on typing more than a few lines of code in a command prompt environment, or if you wish to save a series of commands as part of a project’s analysis, it is probably best that you write and store the commands in an R script file. You can access citation information for R via: You will normally cite R and not RStudio since RStudio does not contribute to the execution of the code (i.e. an R script will run independently of the version of RStudio or of any other IDE used to interface with R). You therefore need to install R regardless of whether or not you use RStudio. In other words, RStudio is not functional without an installation of R. Note that while you do not need RStudio to run R on your computer, the reverse cannot be said.
R can even be run in a shell environment like Linux: In fact, when you install R on your Windows or Mac computer, you are offered a perfectly functional barebones IDE for R. R has been around for decades, long before RStudio was developed. The answer is No! Many new users to the R environment conflate R with RStudio. 2.1.1 Do I need RStudio to interface with R? The former runs on top of R installed on your computer, the latter runs off of an instance of R running on a remote server. A server application that is accessible via a web browser.īoth platforms offer nearly identical experiences.A desktop application that installs directly on your computer.Its purpose is to provide bells and whistles that can improve your experience with the R software. It’s sometimes referred to as an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). RStudio 2 is a software that provides a nifty interface to R. Without R installed on your computer or server, you would not be able to run any commands. R 1 is the software that performs the actual instructions. R and RStudio are two distinctly different applications that serve different purposes.