"edit" command does not work as I would expect

David,

On Aug 14, 2013, at 10:37 AM, David Epstein wrote:

Thanks for your email, which was sufficient to point me to my error.

Before your email, I had thought that if the file did not exist, then the "edit" command would create the file, since this is what happens when using editor programs under Unix. But in R is not correct, at least on my combination of OS and R.

So I first separately created a file called "nam.R" and then tried
vi(file="nam.R").
At this point R opened a new window with an editor that controlled the window and enabled one to edit "nam.R", but the editor wasn't vi and it wasn't vim. Maybe it was some standard editor provided with R.
My problem is therefore half solved. I cannot see how to invoke a true vim or vi that cooperates directly with R.
Do other Mac users experience the same feature?

I suspect that you're running the R Mac GUI (you didn't say). In that case, you're not on a shell, so obviously you cannot use shell programs like vi. If your editor is a proper OS X app (and not just a command line tool), you can set it to be the default editor in the preferences of the GUI.

However, given the reference to other unix platforms above, my guess would be that you really intended to use the command-line version of R (by typing "R" in the shell) - there all the regular unix rules apply.

Cheers,
Simon

I would be interested to know what happens on non-Mac Unix, Linux or Windows platforms, if anyone can spare the time and has the hardware to try it. Some R-help subscribers seem to regard it as axiomatic that no problem with R on a Mac can occur on other platforms, and I have been strongly re-directed to this list. Now perhaps I'll find out that this particular question is also not appropriate for R-SIG-MAC.

Thanks for any help.
David


On 13 Aug 2013, at 15:45, Brandon Hurr wrote:

If I had to guess it would be that your file isn't in the working directory. If you supply the entire file location does it work as expected? 

HTH
B


On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 3:29 PM, David Epstein <David.Epstein at warwick.ac.uk> wrote:
I tried using various versions of the 'edit' command. Here is an account of
how this failed. I hope I have included all relevant information.

I haven't used R for a couple of years. Before restarting with R, I
downloaded the latest version I could find in its binary version, and
installed it without any problems.
Mac Os X Finder command "About R" responds with
R 3.0.1 GUI 1.61 Snow Leopard build (6492)

From inside R

version

platform       x86_64-apple-darwin10.8.0
arch           x86_64
os             darwin10.8.0    #(However, my os is in fact 10.6.8)
system         x86_64, darwin10.8.0
status
major          3
minor          0.1
year           2013
month          05
day            16
svn rev        62743
language       R
version.string R version 3.0.1 (2013-05-16)
nickname       Good Sport

edit(file='2.9.R')
Error in file(con, "r") : cannot open the connection
In addition: Warning message:
In file(con, "r") : cannot open file '2.9.R': No such file or directory

getOption('editor')

[1] "vi"

edit(file='2.9.R',editor='/opt/local/bin/vim')
Error in file(con, "r") : cannot open the connection
In addition: Warning message:
In file(con, "r") : cannot open file '2.9.R': No such file or directory

vi(file='try')
Error in file(con, "r") : cannot open the connection
In addition: Warning message:
In file(con, "r") : cannot open file 'try': No such file or directory

And here is my interaction with tcsh (my default shell)
H2:~% echo $VISUAL
/opt/local/bin/vim
H2:~% echo $EDITOR
/opt/local/bin/vim
H2:~% which vi
vi:   aliased to /opt/local/bin/vim
H2:~/<4>Chap2% ls -ld
drwxr-xr-x  11 dbae  dbae  374  8 Aug 10:54 ./


What am I doing wrong?
Thanks for any help.
David