tempdir() does not respect TMPDIR
Thanks a lot for the confirmation and explanation.
On 2020/8/31 3:45, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
Sorry, I should retract my claim that it's too late to set TMPDIR in .Renviron. It does indeed work on Linux and R 4.0.2, e.g. $ cd $ mkdir test $ cd test $ echo "TMPDIR=$PWD" > ./.Renviron $ cat ./.Renviron TMPDIR=/home/hb/test Rscript --no-init-file -e "tempdir()" [1] "/home/hb/test/RtmpyH47tc" Hmm... either this has changed "recently" or I've got it wrong all the time. Eitherway, I need to revise the vignette in my 'startup' package.
This works just becuase .Renviron is in the same directory R launched. It confirmed what you stated that launched Rgui via double-clicking .RData. Generally, we put .Renviron in R_USER (on Windows).
Sorry for the misleading comment. So, back to your comment about it does *not* work, that is, ~/.Renviron is not read, when you double-click on an .RData file. I just tried with R 4.0.2 in a Windows 10 VM and I think I can reproduce what you're describing. The problem seems to be that when one launches Rgui via double-clicking .RData, the Rgui will only read ./.Renviron, that is, the .Renviron file that is located in the same folder as the .RData file. It will never load ~/.Renviron (e.g. C:/Users\alice/Documents/.Renviron) unless the .RData file is in that folder too.
I should guess to that you said. When I launched R from console (cmd on Windows) by command like: C:\Users\zjs>"c:\Program Files\R\R-4.0.2\bin\R.exe" or C:\Users\zjs>"c:\Program Files\R\R-4.0.2\bin\x64\Rgui.exe" The tempdir() does not return the value I set in .Renviron. It means when R launching, it search .Renvrion in the current directory. If it does not get the .Renviron, it does not search it in R_USER. Am I right? So where I set TMPDIR, R would use it whenever it launched? The purpose that I tried to set TMPDIR is RStudio may refuse to work when user name contained non-latin characters. Thanks again. Best, Jinsong
This looks odd to me but it could be that I made another mistake in my conclusions above. I let someone else with a less mushy brain take over from here. /Henrik On Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 4:31 PM Jinsong Zhao <jszhao at yeah.net> wrote:
I read the help page, I don't understand it very well, since I set the environmental variable TMPDIR in .Renviron. What confused me is when double clicking the *.RData to launch R, the tempdir() does not respect the environmental variable TMPDIR, but launch R by double clicking Rgui icon does. Best, Jinsong On 2020/8/30 0:36, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
It is too late to set TMPDIR in .Renviron. It is one of the
environment variables that has to be set prior to launching R. From
help("tempfile", package = "base"):
The environment variables TMPDIR, TMP and TEMP are checked in turn and
the first found which points to a writable directory is used: if none
succeeds ?/tmp? is used. The path should not contain spaces. **Note
that setting any of these environment variables in the R session has
no effect on tempdir(): the per-session temporary directory is created
before the interpreter is started.**
/Henrik
On Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 6:40 AM Jinsong Zhao <jszhao at yeah.net> wrote:
Hi there, When I started R by double clicking on Rgui icon (I am on Windows), the tempdir() returned the tmpdir in the directory I set in .Renviron. If I started R by double clicking on a *.RData file, the tempdir() return the tmpdir in the directory setting by Windows system. I don't know whether it's designed.
> sessionInfo()
R version 4.0.2 (2020-06-22) Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit) Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 18363) ... Best, Jinsong