atomic vector
An object that contains only one form of data. The atomic modes are: ”logical”, ”numeric”, ”complex” and ”character”.
attach
The act of adding an item to the search list. You usually attach a package with the require function, you attach saved files and objects with the attach function.
data frame
A rectangular data object where each column may be a different type of data. Conceptually a generalization of a matrix, but implemented entirely differently.
factor
A data object that represents categorical data. It is possible (and often unfortunate) to confuse a factor with a character vector.
global environment
The first location on the search list, and the place where objects that you create reside.
list
A type of object with possibly multiple components where each component may be an arbitrary object, including a list.
matrix
A rectangular data object where all cells have the same data type. Conceptually a specialization of a data frame, but implemented entirely differently.
package
A collection of R objects in a special format that includes help files and such. Most packages primarily or exclusively contain functions, but some packages exclusively contain datasets.
search list
The collection of locations that R searches for objects when it is evaluating a command.
Back to top level of Impatient R
jun 25, 26
The function in question is scriptSearch. I’m not much for superlatives — ”most” and ”best” imply one dimension, but we live in a multi-dimensional world. I’m making an exception. The [...]
jun 25, 26
I recently gave a talk at the R in Finance conference in which I introduced the marketAgent package for R. Here is the source for the package if you'd like [...]
jun 25, 26
Executive summary Surprisingly good. And it’s not like my expectations were especially low. Structure There are 20 chapters. I mostly like the chapters and their order. Hadley breaks the 20 chapters [...]

