A scripting and command-line front-end is provided by 'r' (aka 'littler') as a lightweight binary wrapper around the GNU R language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. While R can be used in batch mode, the r binary adds full support for both 'shebang'-style scripting (i.e. using a hash-mark-exclamation-path expression as the first line in scripts) as well as command-line use in standard Unix pipelines. In other words, r provides the R language without the environment.
copied from cf-post-staging / r-littler