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Questions from a beginner.

3 messages · Brian Ripley, Paul Y. Peng

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I have used S-PLUS for years. Now I am learning to use R in
Windows'98. I downloaded the latest version and installed it as
instructed. However, I cannot find answers from online help to the
following questions I encountered. If any of you has quick answers
to these questions, please drop me a couple of lines. Thanks.

1. Why does R change my working directory during a session? I often
used getwd() to check my working directory and surprisingly found
that it was changed, and the location it changes to is quite random.
Has anybody encountered this problem? It is very annoying to check
and set my working directory whenever I want to save my work.

2. I downloaded ESS-5.1.18 and installed it in NTEmacs-20.4. It works
fine with S-PLUS 2000. However, if I use it with R, it is very very
slow and takes more than one minute to see the R prompt after M-x R.
After that, it seems OK. Why?

3. From the online documents, I often see descriptions related to
Rcmd. But there is no file in the Windows distribution of R named
Rcmd. Is it renamed Rterm.exe in Windows?

Paul.
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Please do read the rw-FAQ: it is designed for beginners and answers these
questions (except 2, where it tells you that this is not the correct forum
for your question)!
On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Paul Y. Peng wrote:

            
No. Search for `Rcmd' in the rw-FAQ to find what you have missed (at least
three times).
2 days later
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Prof Brian D Ripley wrote:
The problem described in question 1 is quite weird. I followed all
instructions to create a shortcut of Rgui.exe in my working
directory and to specify the working directory name in the property
of the shortcut. If I issue getwd() right after a session of R is
started, it does show the correct working directory. But after a
while of using R or other Windows applications and if I check the
working directory again using getwd(), very often it shows an
incorrect name! For example, it may point to C:\\RECYCLED or
C:\\Windows, and it does not stay there and may jump to somewhere
else if I check it later.

I am not sure whether this is a problem of R or not. I had the
same problem with Cygwin bash, but it was solved after I
reinstalled Cygwin. Maybe some of you experienced the same problem
and knows how to solve it.

For question 2, Tony Rossini told me that unfortunately it is
"normal" behavior for R + ESS-5.1.18 + NTEmacs and no solution
yet.

Thanks to all who responded.

Paul.

My original post:
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r-help 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-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch
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