On Sat, Nov 21, 1998 at 11:54:09PM +0100, Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote:
Prof Brian Ripley <ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk> writes:
All of this is very experimental, so do be careful not to trust the results. As gunwin32 R has no batch mode, I cannot check standard
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
scripts easily and have only run cursory checks.
How difficult would it be to create one? I suspect that all you need is to avoid starting up the console and do stdio instead. The ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics) crowd will want this as well.
I am not really a MsWindows programmer so I will try to summarize
what I know hoping that others (Luke?) will suggest the right direction.
There are two possibilities easy to implement but not completly
satisfactory:
1) to build a only `stdio` executable, i.e., to have an executable
which behaves as when you start the Unix one with the
--no-readline flag; I suppose that this can be used with ESS
but I don't use Emacs under Windows so I don't know
how Emacs manages sub-processes. This new exe must be called
R.exe (as the other one; if you change the name you will
have to provide different dll's; which is not what we want;
but if it is called R.exe (-> it cannot be put
in RHOME/bin) it can share all the other files). Surely, it
will be possible to do batch processing like under Unix
(redirection provides by the shell from which you launch it).
I have no tried but this would require minimal change (I suppose
that I can have it in less than 1 hour); so, if someone wants
to test it, just ask.
2) to add batch processing to the actual executable,i.e, to let
possible to launch R with a command line of the type
R --input-from afile --output-to anotherfile
In this case, no console is open and R will run in background
(maybe it can open a small window just saying
"R is running; this is the moment for a cup of coffee"
we need it I think (at least to be able to kill the
process)). If you will not use the command line arguments
the standard console will open. R.exe will be a standard
Windows executable (no character console, no stdin/stout/stderr)
-> no ESS support.
On the other end, the ideal solution will be to have an executable
which on demand (i.e., using the --no-readline flag, I suppose)
will or open the graphics console or use `stdio`.
Somewhere in the Win32 API must exist something which let this.
But I have to find out where. Perhaps, someone here can help
Problem is that standard Windows application are either
(i) completly `windowed', like Robert's and mine version of R;
in this case, they don't have standard input and output;
indeed if you launch it from a character console, they behave
more or less as if, under Unix, you launch an application
from an xterm using the background flag (&)
and with stdin and stdout redirected to /dev/null;
or
(ii) `console` applications; in this case stdin and stdout are there;
but the side effect is that they ALWAYS open a character console
(or `lock` the one from which you have launched them);
g.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._