In R, the functions for fitting statistical models based on a linear predictor usually allow for a formula/data specification of the model. The data part is a data.frame object in R. In Julia the corresponding type is a DataFrame as implemented in the DataFrames package.
A formula object in R is an expression whose top-level operator is a unary or binary tilde, ~. The interpretation of many operators, including +, *, ^, \ and : are overridden in the formula language. See the result of
?formulain R for the details.