prehistoric versions of R --> 1995!

"UweL" == Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
   on Tue, 07 Feb 2006 08:56:10 +0100 writes:

   UweL> Petr Pikal wrote:
   >> Hi
   >> 
   >> On 6 Feb 2006 at 15:57, ivo welch wrote:
   >> 
   >> Date sent:      	Mon, 6 Feb 2006 15:57:30 -0500
   >> From:           	ivo welch <ivowel at gmail.com>
   >> To:             	Sean Davis <sdavis2 at mail.nih.gov>
   >> Copies to:      	piet.vanremortel at gmail.com, r-help <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
   >> Subject:        	Re: [R] R loop
   >> 
   >> 
   >>>>> data[ data$a == "name2" ]  # does not work and gives a weird
   >>>>> result,  yuck
   >>>> 
   >>>> data[data$a=="name2",]
   >>>> 
   >>> 
   >>> sorry about this.  I believe a few versions back, one could not subset
   >>> data frames, so I did not even check what I wrote.  Works now.
   >> 
   >> 
   >> It depends on what you consider few versions back. I started with R 
   >> vesion 1.2.0 about 10 years 
   UweL> I bet 200$ (or EUR) you have not used R 10 years ago. ;-)

Is that an open bet or just for Petr?
   UweL> People certainly remember the 1.0.0 release at the remarkable day 
   UweL> 29-FEB-2000.
   UweL> 1.2.0 was released in December 2000, about 5 years ago.
   UweL> I started with 0.62.x in 1998.
   UweL> The oldest version I found on CRAN is a pre-alpha R.sea.hqx for the Mac 
   UweL> dated 07-Nov-1996.

Eehm; that has a wrong date (or then it would not be pre-alpha):
I've always entertained the prehistoric directory of R sources
at ftp://stat.ethz.ch/Software/R/alpha/PreHistoric/
and its oldest file is 
        Name	           Size    Date        
        R-0.1alpha.tar.gz 861464  Feb 12 1996 

I'm pretty sure I was using R 0.16 in the fall of 1996 on Linux, which 
was when I got dse largely converted from S. I had a slightly  earlier 
version in the spring of 1996 on Solaris. (I think the numbering would 
have been 0.11 -0.15 in the spring of 1996.)  I don't think the 
numbering was the same on other platforms.
(which will be 10 years coming Sunday -- what a jubilee!!)
So, even that is not pre-alpha; and yes, that was a bit before CRAN existed. 

Now to the pre-alpha history.  I've digged some more and found

1) that the mac file mentioned above would have
  correct date 'Nov 6 1995' (at least that's the date I saved
  when I looked at the Auckland FTP server through Emacs ange-ftp).

2) The oldest stuff that I have is all from 1995;
  The source I (think I) had first used is dated June 20 1995;
  notably the  R-unix-src.tar.gz with accompanying README and
  INSTALL files
  (There was also ./win subdirectory which I did not use, with
   files all from July 15, 1995; AFAIK done by Robert Gentleman)

I've now put a bit of these oldest files into
 ftp://stat.ethz.ch/Software/R/alpha/PreHistoric/pre-alpha/

3) I've kept an e-mail that Ross had sent me on July 28 with
  two small patches to the (June 20) sources.

  Yes, chances are pretty high that I was the first one outside
  of the Auckland(NZ)-community to actively use R.

I wouldn't be really sure of that (but it's a fair bet).
Note it might be interesting to find even older sources, but that
would most probably have to be by Robert and Ross (or a
sysadmin at Auckland).

I used to have some floppy disks somewhere...

Paul Gilbert
Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich

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prehistoric versions of R --> 1995!

Thread (13 messages)