R: what is the difference between rm and remove?

Question

What is the difference between rm and remove?

Answer 1

They are identical now, but if I remember correctly (and this may have only been in S+) it used to be that rm removed the elements specified without quotes and remove required quotes or a variable with a list of the objects to remove. So rm would be used in the same way that both are mostly used today (without specifying any arguments) and remove would be used like rm( list= ... is today. Since both are useful they were merged into rm a while back, but since people had used remove in the past it was made an alias for rm.