r

TLDR

Start a REPL (interactive shell)

$ R

Check R version

$ R --version

Start R in vanilla mode (i.e. a blank session that doesn't save the workspace at the end)

$ R --vanilla

Execute a file

$ R -f [path/to/file.R]

Execute an R expression and then exit

$ R -e [expr]

Run R with a debugger

$ R -d [debugger]

Check R packages from package sources

$ R CMD check [path/to/package_source]

SYNOPSIS

r [options] [-|file] [R arguments]

Launches GNU R to execute the specified file containing R commands, or takes commands from stdin if '-' is used to denote stdin, using the specified options. This makes it suitable to create R scripts via the so-called shebang '#!/' line. The optional R arguments are stored in the R vector argv.

OPTIONS

-h, --help: Display a short help list.
--usage: Give a short usage message.
-V, --version: Show the version number.
-v, --vanilla: Pass the '--vanilla' option to R.
-t, --rtemp: Use a per-session temporary directory as R does.
-i, --interactive: Force 'interactive()' to evaluate to TRUE, whereas the default is FALSE.
-q, --quick: Skip autoload (i.e. delayed assign) of default libraries.
-p, --verbose: Print the value of expressions to the console.
-l, --packages list: Load the R packages from the comma-separated 'list'.
-d, --datastdin: Evaluates 'X <- read.csv(file="stdin", stringsAsFactors=FALSE)' to read a data set from stdin.
-L, --libpath dir: Add directory to library path via '.libPaths(dir)'.
-e, --eval expr: Evaluate 'expr' in R.

USAGE

r can be used in command-line 'pipes' as well as in 'shebang'-style scripts.

EXAMPLES

Piping R commands:

echo 'cat(pi^2,"\n")' | r

Equivalently, R commands can be given on the command-line:

r -e 'cat(pi^2, "\n")'

Alternatively, commands can be stored in a file, which in turn might use R command 'readLines' to process stdin input:

$ cat examples/fsizes.r fsizes <- as.integer(readLines()) print(summary(fsizes)) stem(fsizes)

which can be evaluated by r with the following command:

ls -l /boot | awk '!/^total/ {print $5}' | r examples/fsizes.r

The script file may contain a "shebang" line:

$ cat examples/install.r #!/usr/bin/env r # a simple example to install one or more packages if (is.null(argv) | length(argv)<1) { cat("Usage: installr.r pkg1 [pkg2 pkg3 ...]) q() } repos <- "http://cran.us.r-project.org" lib.loc <- "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library" install.packages(argv, lib.loc, repos, dependencies=TRUE)

and if it is executable, it can be called as:

examples/install.r "TeachingDemos"

See the examples directory in the sources for more.

NOTE

The executable program is called r, but the project is called littler to avoid confusion with the real GNU R.

AUTHORS

Jeffrey Horner <jeff.horner@vanderbilt.edu>. Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>.

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