On Jan 18, 2008 1:19 PM, Jeffrey J. Hallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Frank E Harrell Jr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Rob Robinson wrote: > >> I wonder if those who complain about SAS as a programming environment have > >> discovered SAS/IML which provides a programming environment akin to Matlab > >> which is more than capable (at least for those problems which can be > >> treated > >> with a matrix like approach). As someone who uses both SAS and R - > >> graphical > >> output is so much easier in R, but for handling large 'messy' datasets SAS > >> wins hands down... > >> Cheers > >> Rob > > > > My understanding is that PROC IML is disconnected from the rest of the > > SAS language, e.g., you can't have a loop in which PROC GENMOD is called > > or datasets are merged. If that's the case, IML is not very competitive > > in my view. > > I know about IML, but have never really used it. Back when I was doing that > kind of stuff (before discovering S-Plus) I used GAUSS for compute-intensive > matrix simulations and the like. I didn't have SAS for my PC, and there was > no way I could tie up the Sun boxes at work with simulations for my thesis. > > But while IML does some nice stuff, it just reinforces the point I made in > another post about the proliferation of "little languages" in SAS. By my > count, > that are now 5: > > 1. data step programming > 2. macros -- a 'language' grafted on top of data step programming > 3. scl -- if you want to do any kind of user interface > 4. af -- object-oriented framework built on top of scl > 5. iml -- matrix language like GAUSS, but doesn't play well with 1:4 above.
6. the "proc" language Hadley -- http://had.co.nz/ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.