SAS professionals invest time and energy in improving their fluency with the broad range of capabilities SAS software has to offer. However, the computer programming field is not limited to SAS alone and it behooves the professional to be well rounded in his or her skill sets. One of the most interesting contenders in the field of analytics is the open source R software. Due to its range of applications and the fact that it is free, more organizations are considering how to incorporate it into their operations and many people are already seeing its use incorporated into project requirements. As such, it is now common to need to move code between R and SAS, a process which is not inherently seamless.

This paper serves as a basic tutorial on some of the most critical functions in R and shows their parallel in SAS to aid in the translation process between the two software packages. A brief history of R is covered followed by information on the basic structure and syntax of the language. This is followed by the foundational skill involved in importing data and establishing R data sets. Next, some common reporting and graphing strategies are explored with additional coverage on creating data sets that can be saved, as well as how to export files in various formats. By having the R and SAS code together in the same place, this tutorial serves as a reference that a beginner can follow to gain confidence and familiarity when moving between the two.

Sarah Woodruff is a senior systems analyst at Westat and has been programming in SAS professionally for fifteen years. She works on reporting and analysis for the Agricultural Health Study through NCI and NIEHS, the ASA24 dietary assessment study through NIH, and facilitates Westat’s Advanced Methods technical community group. She was the Operations Chair for SESUG 2012 and served as SESUG’s primary registrar for several years as well as having a stint as its vice president along with section chairing many times. Her undergraduate work includes a BS in mathematics and statistics from Georgia State University and a BS in microbiology from University of Maryland as well as an MS in bioinformatics from UMUC.