[R] cubic spline

[Ben Bolker]

Martin Maechler <maechler <at> stat.math.ethz.ch> writes:

 [snip]

> but definitely *no* need to use a function from an extra CRAN
> package .. as someone else ``erronously'' suggested.
> 
> Note that
>   spline() and splinefun()
> together with
>   approx() and approxfun()
> are among the several hundred functions that were already
> part of "pre-alpha" R, i.e., before R had a version number or *any* 
> packages ...
> and yes, the README then started with the two lines
> 
> | R Source Code (Tue Jun 20 14:33:47 NZST 1995)
> | Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995 by Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka
> 
> and it would be *really* *really* great
> if people did not add stuff to their packages that has
> been part of R for longer than they have even heard of R.
> 
> Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich

  To be fair, the 'fields' package has a pretty long history too --
I think it may have been ported from an S-PLUS 'package' (or whatever
the correct terminology is) that existed quite a while ago.

 I think it was the FUNFITS module. From http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/S/:

funfits

    FUNFITS is a comprehensive S-Plus module for fitting functions and
nonlinear time series, including multivariate splines, Kriging and
neural networks.  Contributed by Doug Nychka
(nychka at ucar.edu). [25/Apr/96] [24/Mar/97][24/Sep/99] (3 kbytes). The
actual compressed tar file is available as funfits23.tar.gz in the S
collection. Access this file via FTP, or the WWW, but not
e-mail. (596k).  Older version avaulable at funfits.tar.Z

  A quick look at funfits.tar.Z suggests that 'splint' existed in that
version, in 1996 -- so respectably old.