Is R an interpreted or compiled programming language?

Question

Is R an interpreted or compiled programming language?

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

R is an interpreted language.

Answer 3

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

Answer 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.

Answer 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).

Answer 6

R is definitely written in C. I asked myself this question alittle while ago, and resolved it by downloaded the source code from http://www.r-project.org/.