Message-ID: <7229BBA9-0901-4D74-A6B7-E9BB0479E4C2@ucl.ac.uk>
Date: 2007-12-19T14:32:28Z
From: Jon Clayden
Subject: Standard input and R
Dear all,
I am trying to wrap a *nix shell script around R for a particular
purpose, for which I need to get R to execute predetermined commands
but retain interactivity and allow user input during their execution.
A straight redirection of standard input is therefore not appropriate,
and I don't think "littler" is the solution because I don't want to
write an independent R script.
What I want is effectively something like what ruby does with the '-e'
option:
$ ruby -e 'gets'
<waits for input from terminal>
R seems to accept an '-e' option too, even though I can't see it
mentioned in the output from 'R -h', but it doesn't work the same:
$ R --slave --vanilla -e 'scan(what=character(0),nlines=1,quiet=T)'
character(0)
$
The only way I can get this to work is by creating an .Rprofile file
containing the commands I want to run, but this is suboptimal for a
number of reasons: I have difficulties if an .Rprofile already exists
in the working directory, the default packages are not loaded, and the
process doesn't quit if stop() is called.
I have a vague inkling that this may be achievable with a
pseudoterminal (pty) or named pipe, but if anyone knows a simpler
route I'd be glad to avoid getting involved in that kind of thing...
Many thanks in advance.
Jon